


Big Top of Babel

by Icosagens



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Detective Comics (Comics)
Genre: Ableism, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Background Case, Bad Humor, Batkids Age Reversal, Between Hope and a Hard Place, Character Death, Demon Children, Detective Noir, Dick Grayson is Robin, Dysfunctional Relationships, Earn Your Happy Ending, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, League of Assassins Damian Wayne, Melodrama, Partners in Crime, Power of Words, Quests, Redemption, Suicide, Undercover Missions, Xenophobia, liminal spaces
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25388725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icosagens/pseuds/Icosagens
Summary: It was supposed to be an in-and-out job. Get rid of the circus child, appease the Demon's Head. Now, Damian's on the run with two kids who can't communicate with each other as they attempt to track down the evasive Tony Zucco; while he tries to avoid the ever omniscient eyes of Bruce Wayne. Ageswap AU.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Comments: 54
Kudos: 187





	1. She Loves Me Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My… beloved,” Talia says, like someone has pressed a slice of lemon between her teeth.
> 
> “Your father,” she tries. The way it rolls from her tongue seems to equally displease her, so she makes a third attempt, and says, “Bruce.” It is in a perfect little Jersey accent. Maybe it is that which empowers her to continue.
> 
> “Bruce has taken an interest in fostering a child.”
> 
> “A child,” Damian repeats. He swallows, and presses his lips together. Loosening the muscles in his jaw before he grits his teeth, he lays his palms along the edge of the table. This emotion will pass. He acknowledges this emotion, he welcomes it, he embraces it. It will carry him, and then it will drop him. Ephemeral, is the word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has more basis in preboot, but borrows some stuff from the new 52 and rebirth. most of them are incidental—e.g. cass likes ballet, jason's hair is naturally black, that time ra's called damian hafid. it's trivia tilt-a-whirl. in the end though, i wouldn't really try to align it with either. i'm still too new to reading comics to have lore usage down pat.

Let it be stated for the record that Damian had thought it best to eliminate rather than mitigate Bruce Wayne’s “stray” issue. Shoo the cat, and the cat will return. Poison a dish of salmon, and with a pair of rubber gloves and a shovel, the matter is resolved.

It is probably true that if he had seen this philosophy through, Damian would have found himself shoved into a wall, his throat constricted by a gauntleted fist, in some Gotham City back-alley. But then, Wayne at his core is no different from any other of the world's sentimental terrors. He possesses exorbitant wealth and extraordinary martial arts skill, yes. He chooses to use this wealth and skill to costume himself and round up every halfwit with more than a screw loose in his godforsaken city, yes. But in the end, he swims in the same primordial soup as the rest. Absolutely unspecial. Him having once been a candidate for successor to the Demon's Head only confirms that regular bathing in the pits has rendered Damian's grandfather dead from the neck up.

All of this ices the cake that set Grandfather on the path to squander Damian as a babysitter. All of this because he requires something to lord over the head of the manchild to whom at one point he had wanted to pass his scepter. Twenty-one years of living at his beck and call for this. As if one boy could topple this Dark Knight.

Except this child, this “Dick Grayson,” can, apparently. And therein lies Damian's problem.

It begins like this:

In retrospect, Damian would’ve rather met his mother fresh out of the womb, like any other child. But he is not any other child, and a displeasing series of circumstances have led to this meeting happening in a nondescript apartment in Islamabad, with him seated across from her at a low table. A comically sized trunk stymies their view of each other.

The first thing Talia al Ghul does is ask, "You are Damian?"

It is not a question.

Her hands are clasped in her lap, over her legs, which are crossed at the ankle. She wears a dress with sharp lines and fierce hue. Coupled with eyes lined like a cat’s and dark lipstick, her face, which already appears to be carved from bronze, takes on a whole new cast. In simple cloth and sandals, he must appear plebeian next to her.

"I am Damian," Damian confirms. "I presume you are my mother?"

"I contributed half of the genetic material necessary for your creation," Talia al Ghul corrects. She is frowning. "I'm sure you're aware that after your conception you were transferred to a test tube. You spent very little time in my womb."

"Grandfather has told me as much," he says, and then decides to ask, because he is in the business of asking foolish questions to foolish people, "How am I to address you?"

“Gravitas and deference would have you call me ‘Mother,’” says Talia al Ghul. Damian meets her eyes, as she says this. They are phosphorescent, in the same way the Lazarus Pit is phosphorescent, and they share an incredible burbling depth with its pools. The only differences are their colors: brown versus green. Ostensibly, this woman is one-hundred and fifty-eight years old. “But I think we are beyond that. You may call me Talia.”

“OK... Talia,” Damian says.

Talia pauses for a moment to study him, and he lets her. He feels her eyes rove from his buzzcut, down the slope of his skull to his eyes and nose.

“I presume you still have interest in the more pressing matter which drives this meeting?” she says, eventually.

“Yes,” Damian agrees. “Grandfather said you had requested me for a particular mission, one that he felt was of 'incredible consequence and magnitude.'”

It should be an art, the attempt to dig toes into a linoleum floor. He will succeed; he will be the first. The eye contact between Talia and him never breaks all the while. Her response to him is slow to come, for a woman so quick to bring up Damian’s own leaden journey to the point of their meeting.

“My… beloved,” Talia says, like someone has pressed a slice of lemon between her teeth.

“Your father,” she tries. The way it rolls from her tongue seems to equally displease her, so she makes a third attempt, and says, “Bruce.” It is in a perfect little Jersey accent. Maybe it is that which empowers her to continue.

“Bruce has taken an interest in fostering a child.”

“A child,” Damian repeats. He swallows, and presses his lips together. Loosening the muscles in his jaw before he grits his teeth, he lays his palms along the edge of the table. This emotion will pass. He acknowledges this emotion, he welcomes it, he embraces it. It will carry him, and then it will drop him. Ephemeral, is the word.

“Yes, I said that. Do not make this about you, _Hafid_.”

Her shadow appears to swell. Although her eyes do not narrow, and her eyebrows do not convolute into any sort of motion, Damian feels as if he is being pressed against a wall, or scrutinized in a criminal lineup.

“That’s not my name,” Damian says. “Since you are having me address you as Talia, you must respect _my_ wishes. Call me Ibn al Xu’ffasch, or Damian. I won’t answer to anything else.”

His nerves, now seared to cauterization, have no hold over him. Still, he retains enough decorum not to continue with the menagerie of barbs he has saved for her over the years.

Talia smiles, and it is the most incongruent thing Damian has had the misfortune of laying his eyes upon in a long while.

“You _are_ my son,” she says.

Damian says, “Tt. Please, continue.”

“He feels a… kinship with this boy, because he watched as his parents died before his eyes.”

“As his own did.”

“Yes, as his own did.”

Damian wonders, idly, what it would be to carve his mother’s heart from her chest. He wonders if it would weigh on him at all, if he did. He doubts it. Doubting it, that’s what he does. This woman: what she does, who she is, her visage, her constitution, her very being, is suspicious.

“Why do you care?” Damian adjures. “I’m not egocentric enough to believe that you came here to rub in my face that my father seeks a son other than myself. I don’t believe you wish to take revenge for Wayne seeking family other than you, either, because your one-and-done love spell had its denouement in you raping him for a eugenics experiment.”

“Watch your tone,” Talia says.

Her eyes crackle like coals, and for the life of him he cannot tell whether whatever meaning she imbibes into her next words has any substance to it.

“But you’re right. I toy with Bruce, but I take no interest in the domestic aspects of his life. Doing so in my youth, as you so blithely pointed out, was my folly.

“What I do care about is his value as a tool. You’ve failed to prove a suitable replacement for the Demon's Head, and while he no longer has interest in using Bruce as one, he is still invaluable. He has a vested interest in this child. Though he is too jaded a man to love so easily, I would call what he feels for that boy affection, at the very least. At any rate, he’s exposed his stomach. It's time to gut him.”

Damian notes that his lips are curled upward and behind his teeth. Aborting the motion, he clenches his hands into fists: right, then left, then splays his fingers along the grain of the table.

“So you’re sending out your _failed replacement_ as an insurance policy?” he asks, leaning forward, leaning toward Talia. “Even with my pledge to the League, that’s a lot to request. I’m no sheep; I don’t do my master’s will to that great a detriment.”

“Is this how you speak to your grandfather?” Talia asks.

She seems genuinely curious, or at least, her voice is free from mockery. Watching her face, he waits for it to twitch. But he finds nothing.

“I treat Grandfather with the respect he merits.”

“I’m not using you as an insurance policy, Damian,” she says, eventually. “What I want to do is give you the chance to make it so that if you cannot have your father, no child can. It sounds vindictive, and petty, but it could be your justice.”

“That is petty,” Damian agrees, but he pauses. Contemplates. Turns what she has said over in his head.

_Ah._

“You want me to kill the boy.”

“I want you to take care of the situation by any means necessary.”

“And ‘by any means necessary’ would entail… ?” he inquires.

“‘The sky's the limit,’ Damian,” Talia says. “You can use Bruce’s salacious reputation to bring into question his fitness as a guardian. You can facilitate drowning the case in bureaucracy. Social Services is unaware at the moment, but this boy is not a citizen; get Immigrations and Customs Enforcement involved.”

Damian nods his acquiescence, but does not speak.

“Will you accept this mission, boy?” Talia asks.

“I am not so young,” says Damian.

Her smile is the most awful thing, really. Thanks to the Lazarus Pit, her teeth look to be carved from porcelain. They make her lips look all the more like streaks of blood, look like someone has dragged their jagged fingernails across her face.

“I wouldn’t presume to think so,” says Talia al Ghul.

In a graceful sweep, she palms the side of trunk whose contents had been festering between them, and unbuckles the latches. It is facing away from him, so Damian cannot see what is inside, but she pulls out a passport, and two other papers: a CRBA certificate issued by the United States of America, and a birth certificate. There is also a manila folder, unlabelled.

“I am a citizen of the United States?”

Damian has conducted missions in over thirty countries, in his lifetime, but he has not once been to the USA.

Grandfather had always insisted, “There is nothing for you there, Hafid. It would not behoove you to become bogged down by the American paradigm. They have coalesced in their founding zeitgeist.”

“Hasn’t every nation?” Damian had asked, once.

“Then all the better you do not comprehend the burden of one more.”

He reaches his fingers out, and brushes the CRBA certificate.

“It’s your birthright, and it would have been foolish not to take advantage of it,” says Talia. “You are American as much as you are Egyptian and Pakistani. Here.”

She hands him the passport. Taking it off of her hands with a wordless nod, he pages through several leaves of paper. He pauses when he notes the flicker that must be a photo. The only thing he can think, as he looks over it is, “When did my eyes become so dead?”

There is a caption, too. His being, apparently, can be encapsulated into a few lines. It isn’t as if Talia could have used the closest thing to a surname Damian actually has, but—

“Damian al Malak? Damian _of the angel_?”

“You are already part of a greater cosmic joke. I am only helping you live up to the role.”

The dichotomy between her words and her grave face is startling.

“I am an angel of death,” Damian says.

“Don’t be bigheaded.”

They stare at each other, for a moment. The air is stiff, and reedy. To the din of the noise from surrounding apartments, his heart beats: buh-BOOM, buh-BOOM, buh-BOOM.

The moment ends.

“I don’t want you to be obstinate,” Talia says in the wake of their discomfiting silence. “At the American airport, I mean.”

The CRBA and birth certificates crinkle under her elbow.

“I’m well-accustomed to consenting to bag-and-body searches,” assures Damian. “And it’s twenty-one years too late for you to fret over such things—”

— so don’t start acting like my mother, now.

“I’m not fretting,” says Talia. “Don’t flatter yourself. I simply don’t wish you to compromise the mission before it even starts with this recalcitrant attitude of yours. Even beyond what I’ve observed now, I’m told you have a terrible track record.”

“Moldova was _onc_ — I’m not engaging with you!” Damian snaps.

He straightens his robes; his stance, and his visage. He moves on. He will move on.

“Is there anything else that would be pertinent for me to know? What's in that file, for example?”

“That's your mission briefing," Talia says, crisply. "I don't have the time to iron out the details. But beyond that, yes, actually. There is something else. You will have company, on this mission."

“I’m sorry?” Damian says.

She flicks out her wrist, and in three motions has the CRBA and birth certificates and the passport laid neatly back in the bosom of the trunk. She redoes the latches, and hands it to him. Then, she puts her right index and long fingers to her crimson lips.

With a sharp gesture, she whistles.

Damian gapes.

“Are you sending me with a _dog_?” he demands. “Is this _your_ version of a cosmic joke?”

“I am not sending you with a dog,” Talia rejoins. “I am sending you with the One Who Is All.”

A young girl, bird-boned and several inches shorter than Talia, emerges from the kitchen's tall cabinet. She wears a white hockey mask, black, tight clothes, and two utility belts crossed over her chest in an “x.” When Talia tilts her palm toward her, she waves.

“Like I said,” says Talia, “I am sending you with the One Who is All. Call her Ubu, for brevity’s sake.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard.”

Talia continues talking like Damian hasn’t spoken at all.

“The only language Ubu understands is English, but she’s also trained ASL, and several other niche sign languages. Her lack of lingual skills is made up for in her ability to read the body. She sees things that you and I couldn’t dream of.”

As clichéd a phrase as “dawning comprehension” is, Damian can’t help but feel it particularly applicable at this moment, as he gazes at this girl. She can’t be more than sixteen. There is an amorphous familiarity to the story that is being woven, the story of this girl. Grandfather had mentioned, a time or two—

“You’ve brought me David Cain’s pet project. You expect me to look after David Cain’s pet project.”

“David Cain’s ‘pet project’ is going to look after _you_.”

Damian takes to ignoring his mother with the same fierceness with which she had him but a minute ago. Particulars begin to come back to him, the particulars of how this girl was fashioned from the womb.

“Do you know how to read?” he asks Ubu, in English.

Ubu already stands at attention, but if it is possible at all, her entire being ossifies. She shakes her head to the left, then to the right, then to the left again.

“So you don’t write, either?”

Ubu takes her index and middle finger and taps them to her thumb, in tandem.

_No._

There is an inkling of an idea in Damian’s mind; he closes his eyes and bites back a nebulous sense of disgust.

“You don’t speak, do you?”

Clenching her hand into a fist, Ubu raises it to her shoulder, and rocks it back and forth.

_Yes._

His head snaps back to Talia.

“And you condone this?” Damian rebukes, slipping out of English, without thinking.

“Your grandfather condones this,” Talia snipes back, following suit. “I don’t particularly care. Ubu rivals Richard Dragon, Bronze Tiger, Karate Kid, and Lady Shiva in martial arts skills. Moral compunctions aside, she’s an incredible asset. And,” she pauses, long enough for her gaze to travel from the oiled leather of his sandals, up the seams of his robe to its v-neck, then creep along his clavicle and cervical vertebrae, to his chin and then his malar bones, to his eyes. “You’ve killed hundreds; it’s a little late to tread the moral high ground.”

His blood boils, with the rage of a thousand suns. He locks Talia into eye contact, does not let go.

“I’m not taking her,” he says.

He closes his eyes, then turns to look at Ubu.

“I’m not taking you,” he tells her; he still speaks in Arabic.

He can see the shadows in her mask shift. She blinks, and then blinks again.

“You have grown too comfortable with your position in the League,” Talia says. “ _Heel._ ”

“Don’t tell me to heel when you’re encroaching black sheep territory, yourself,” Damian wasps.

"You’re taking her,” says Talia.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t Grandfather want her for his guard detail? Isn’t that what she’s _for?_ ”

Damian looks between the two of them, shifting his gaze up to Talia, then down the line of Ubu’s bob to the eye holes in her mask.

“You should go,” he tells her, this time having the forethought to switch languages, and when she doesn’t move, he does again. “ _Go!_ ”

Ubu looks up at him. She holds out her hands, and then clenches them. Leaving her two index fingers extended, she holds the right one’s pad over the left one’s nail, by a few inches. Then she whacks one on the other, vehemently, several times in succession.

_**Can’t.** _

“You’re being cruel,” says Talia. “She’s here under the Demon's Head's orders; she can’t break them.”

Damian’s hackles rise. Tilting his head, he lets his eyebrows go sky high, and purses his lips so hard inward that the tips of them rub slick against his teeth.

“ _I’m being cruel?_ ” he asks. “ _I’m_ being cruel? We are assassins and eco-extremists, we kill people without the faintest sense of contrition, but we do not—” he gesticulates wildly in Ubu’s direction, “—we do not do _this._ ”

“What has got you in such a _tizzy?_ ” Talia demands. “I’ve received twenty-seven reports on you over the years from your grandfather in hopes I would take you off his hands, and while you are said to be mulish there isn’t a single mention of this insanity. It’s no wonder you were deemed a failed heir—you’re lucky the Demon’s Head didn’t send you the same way as Dusan.

“Get off your high horse, look this girl in the eye, and tell her that she is going with you to Gotham City. You are nothing, and what you believe means nothing; you would do well to remember that .”

“Fine,” Damian snarls, “Fine, I will.”

He simpers like a siren, all sharp-straight and just a hint of teeth, before rolling back on his heels and tilting himself toward Ubu.

“Ubu,” he says, “how would you like to leave this place?”

Damian imagines her to be raising an eyebrow at him from under her mask, perhaps side-eying Talia.

Talia says, “Get out of my sight, godforsaken children."

And they do. Not checking to see whether Ubu follows him, Damian grabs the trunk, hauls it over his shoulder, and sweeps from the room.

As he descends the staircase and reenters the bustling streets, he cannot sense her presence, but in their world, that means nothing. If Ubu is half as good as the prototype Grandfather and Cain had dreamed up, he would be insulted to be able to detect her.

Damian makes it to the end of the block, with this purported shadow of his, and then hails a taxi. Ignoring any number of the looks he receives, he begins to direct the driver. When Ubu slips into the seat next to him—he is of the doubt that the driver notices her—he tells him to floor it.

They end up stopping next to a small gas station. It is closed and camera free, which is thankful, for Cassandra looks preposterous in her current garb. He feels up the contents of the trunk and finds a banded wad of PKR, which he undoes to pay for their trip. One glare is enough to silence hypothetical questions before they leave the driver's lips.

Damian and Cassandra had high-tailed out as soon as Talia had—so to speak—sentenced them to eternal damnation, and since Damian had not had the foresight to anticipate he would not be returning to Nanda Parbat for the time being, the summation of their belongings is at her mercy. Introducing the unabridged contents of Damian and Ubu, formerly Talia’s, briefcase:

  * One collared long-sleeved shirt, a pair of slacks, and a tie
  * One dress, likely fashionable in the United States
  * Two t-shirts and two pairs of pants, one pair small and one pair large
  * Six pairs of socks, three pairs small and three pairs large
  * Three pairs of boxers, three pairs of women’s underwear, and one bralette
  * Two sweaters, one small and one large
  * Two pairs of sneakers
  * Two toothbrushes, one tube of toothpaste, two sticks of unscented deodorant, one bottle of unscented shampoo, and one comb
  * One towel, and one washcloth
  * One tube of shell-pink lipstick
  * A comprehensive body of documentation and media coverage on C.C. Haly and Norton Bros. Circus, John Grayson, Mary Grayson née Marie Lloyd, and Richard “Dick” Grayson
  * "Damian al Malak’s" United States passport, and CRBA and birth certificates
  * “Cassandra Woosan's” United States passport and birth certificate



“Your name is Cassandra?”

Ubu cups her hand but doesn’t close the fingers

_C._

She touches her four fingers to her palm and leaves her thumb sticking up.

_A._

She moves her thumb over her index and long fingers.

_S._

She repeats the motion.

_S._

Damian waits for her to spell out the rest of her purported name, but she does not. Eventually, after what must be a whole minute of staring at each other, she puts both hands palms-in in front of her and flicks her pinkies away.

_Finished._

“You like to be called ‘Cass,’” says Damian, and when Cassandra nods he says, “I do not... tend to address people by nicknames, or even first names most of the time. It’s how I was raised. But if you wish, I will call you that.”

Cassandra gives him a “thumbs up.”

  * Two plane tickets for a 19:31 flight from Islamabad to Queens
  * One laptop, and two mobile phones
  * ₨ 50
  * $150
  * Two credit cards
  * One pack of matches
  * One unloaded handgun



With no ceremony, when Damian examines the contents of the briefcase and discovered the gun, he slips one of the t-shirts over his hand and surreptitiously disposes of it in a nearby garbage can.

“Law enforcement will have a ball with that,” he says.

Beside him, Cassandra nods solemnly. He reexamines their newfound belongings, considering. There is no reason for Talia to have been so thorough, to have packed for them at all. The plane ticket itself was far too early for there to be time for him to return to Nanda Parbat as Grandfather had instructed him to.

“She knew,” Damian seethes. “She knew this was going to happen, and prepared accordingly. She’s mocking us.”

Cassandra holds her arms out in front of her, palms hanging low, and moves them up then down, twice, left to right.

_Calm down._

Damian nearly rips off her head. He takes a deep breath, and then another. Closes his eyes, and then opens them.

“Tt. Do not presume to tell me what to do,” he says, and then, “Let’s get changed. The formal clothes will do best.”

Cassandra, nonplussed, complies. She pinches the fabric of the dress between her forefingers, and pulls it out. It’s a mottled turquoise number, redolent of its eponymous stone. With no shame, she slips out of her clothing and begins to shimmy up into it. Damian ducks his head to the side before he can see anything, and takes the opportunity to pull out the collared shirt and slacks.

Unlike Cassandra, he ducks behind a gas pump before changing, and completes his task at warp speed. Adjusting the cuffs as he reemerges, he finds Cassandra prying open the tube of lipstick, her mask strewn off to the side. Her face juxtaposes hard and soft lines remarkably well. With large, arched eyebrows, an acute nose, and sharp lips, Cassandra looks to be both in the springtime of her youth and in the throes of eons. Her eyes are dark, and bore through all.

“How old are you?” Damian asks, while Cassandra paints on lipstick with a deft finger.

She does not answer immediately, but once she caps the tube and puts it down, she flashes him ten fingers, and then five.

“Fifteen,” he confirms, and she nods.

Working at knotting his tie, Damian kicks Cassandra’s and his discarded clothes together.

“Light a match, and burn them,” he tells her.

She complies. They stand, mesmerized by the flames as they lick up the black and spit it out as gray ash. Together, they sweep up the ashes into their palms and dispose of them in the garbage can, along with their shoes, the rest of the matches, and Cassandra’s mask—the last three after a dunk-and-scrub in a filthy pool of rainwater in the crags of the pavement to rid them of fingerprints.

“We’re virtually criminals now,” Damian says, as he dries his hands on the washcloth. When he hands it to Cassandra, she nods, with distinction.

Cassandra signs at him, and for a moment he thinks she’s said “finish” again. He scrutinizes the motion in his mind, but she must sense his lack of certainty, for she repeats the gesture. He realizes that her fingers are splayed, rather than pressed together.

_Already._

“I suppose you’re right. If nothing else, Cass, we are outside of the law.”

Cassandra gives him another thumbs up. Leaving out the phones, two pairs of socks, and both of the shoes, he straightens up everything else that left the trunk, and packs it back in. As they put on their footwear, he quizzes her.

“Have you been to an airport before?”

Forefingers to thumb.

_No._

“Have you been on a plane before?”

Fist to shoulder. Rock fist.

_Yes._

“So it was a private plane, then?”

Fist to shoulder. Rock fist.

“Has anyone ever explained to you how an airport works?”

Forefingers to thumb.

This was going to be a long day. And, with this latest suspicion of his, it was only going to get longer.

“Have you ever used a mobile phone before?”

Forefingers to thumb.

And there it was.

“Have you ever used any sort of phone before?”

Forefingers to thumb.

“I know you can’t read letters, but can you read numbers?”

Forefingers to thumb.

“If I were to teach you to associate the spoken words for numbers with the numbers you will see on that screen, would you be able to remember that?”

Forefingers to thumb.

Damian is not one for melodramatics, but he catches himself about to _sigh_ , like a damsel in rare form.

“If I were to explain how this phone worked to you, would you be able to remember what the icons mean by looking at the pictures?”

Cassandra breaks the mold by clenching her hands into fists with the thumbs sticking out, and shoving them forward.

_Try._

“For the love of God,” Damian says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Let us just go; we can figure this out later.”

Cassandra frowns. She about-faces, and slips her pinky finger under the handle of the trunk and snatches it from Damian. Flinging it up into the air, she uses a pas de bourrée-esque motion to land gracefully in just such a place to catch it on her head. She proceeds to walk off. Just like that.

Damian scoffs.

“Show off.”

Sending yet another thumbs up his way from behind her back, Cassandra doesn’t even skip a beat in her stride. Damian decides it is high time he allows himself his sigh, and does so. It is a heart-rending sigh, a sigh of epic proportions. With this moment of weakness aside, he proceeds to give her chase.

“Wait,” he says. “We must discuss something of consequence; this very moment, at best.”

Cassandra doesn’t stop.

“Cass, turn around, so we may speak,” Damian says.

_“Cassandra.”_

This catches her attention. Her head whips around. Stopping just long enough to give him a “thumbs down,” then let her eyes bore into him for several moments which drip as slow and stickily as molasses in an upturned jar, she turns around and briskens her pace.

“Cass,” says Damian, “I think we should separate.”

Her gait slows, by millimeters first, then centimeters, and then she is there, she has stopped. She does not turn around, but she has stopped.

“I can show you how to use the phone, but I shan’t take you to Gotham City with me. You would only be a burden. You can do what you like: return to the League, strike off on your own. I don’t particularly care. Take the briefcase, and everything in it. My grandfather will be able to track the credit card, but you’ve survived in a den of assassins; as a product you must be resilient. I have faith you should do well on your own.”

Now, Cassandra turns around. She’s a deadshot for Damian’s eyes. Marching forward, she meets his eyes with unprecedented vigor.

She proceeds to sucker punch him in the gut.

Damian lets out a slew of curses, digging his heels in the ground to prevent himself from staggering backward.

“In the name of God, what are you _doing_ , Cassandra?” he snaps.

Signing a well-worn pattern with a dogged scowl on her face, Cassandra arches her back, with feeling.

_C. A. S. S._

She proceeds to form her hand into a y-shape and thrust it forward with such vigor that he hears her elbow snap in its socket.

_Stay._

“Cass stay,” Damian echoes.

Nodding, Cassandra steps forward and points at his shirt. He blinks, but when her finger holds steady, he untucks it, lifts it to see a bruise ripening like a sick peach across the flesh of his stomach.

Her hand forms the y-shape again, and thrusts forward, again.

_Stay._

“No,” says Damian. “I said that in all seriousness, and you inflicting me bodily harm was in no way an incentive for me to change my mind.”

Cassandra unlatches the briefcase, and pries open its lips just enough to make the two plane tickets inside visible.

“You are a fiend,” Damian says. “Why is it that you wish so fervently to come with me?”

Cass holds up her dominant index finger and her base index fingers, clenching the rest of her fingers toward her palm, and presses them toward each other. Stopping just before they make contact, she catches his eye.

_Goal._

“You have something you wish to do?”

She nods.

“Then do it. Yourself.”

Even with her face still scrunched, Damian can see her eyebrows dart to the top of her head. She repeats the motion with derisive intent, but then supplements it with another: forming the sign for “a,” loosely, and then lifting it up with her other hand.

_Help._

“Why do you think I would be able to help you?” Damian inquires, as genuine as he’s ever been. “Why do you think I’d want to help you?”

Cass makes several rapid signs in succession, each one so deliberate that mutinous intent rolls off of it in waves. Damian scowls, and refuses to watch.

“At the moment, I’m not so inclined to listen to whatever you may have to say,” he wasps, mulishly.

Closing her eyebrows, Cassandra very deliberately, very slowly, brings her right hand to her mouth. She shoves her palm down and away, and ends with her palm facing the floor.

_Bad._

She then points at Damian.

“You’re doing quite the job ingratiating yourself to me,” he says.

Bringing her hand back to her mouth, Cassandra goes back through the motion.

_Bad._

She then points at herself, and pauses, before maneuvering her hands back into the sign for “help.” She points and Damian again, and then about-faces her hand to do the same to herself. He cracks some distant cousin of a smile, then snorts.

“I suppose we do deserve each other.”

She bobs her head.

“So in a sense of kinship for people of our ilk… what? In addition to taking care of Bruce Wayne’s pest problem, we go on your quest?”

Cassandra doesn't respond, rather, she pulls out his plane ticket, and flicks it toward him. Snatching it between his forefingers, Damian raises his eyebrow.

“You’ve just facilitated my walking away,” he points out.

She nods. Nursing the burgeoning impression of being dissected by her eyes, he weighs the ticket in his hand, rubbing it between his thumb and index finger.

“I’m not helping you,” he says, eventually. “Whatever endeavor you seek to take to task, that is your burden, and your burden alone.”

He holds up a finger before she has a chance to react.

“And I won’t entertain a difficult traveling companion. You will have to make yourself scarce, as a rule, and you certainly shan’t be permitted to be a nuisance.”

She holds out her hand, fingers loose and upright, and brings her thumb and index fingers together to form a circle.

_OK._

“Now close that briefcase, so we can find a train,” says Damian. He tucks the plane ticket into his pocket, along with the mobile phone, and snatches one of the credit cards from the briefcase before Cassandra latches it shut. It joins its brothers. Cassandra, after a moment’s consideration, follows suit.

“I presume you don’t know how to use one of those, either?”

Forefingers to thumb.

“I shall do my best to contain my surprise,” Damian drolls.

The trip to the train station entails a several mile walk, two buses, a detour during which they are separated for approximately seven minutes, and a pit-stop for lunch. Cassandra’s lipstick smears all over her first few bites of chapati, and when Damian points it out, she cracks the first smile he has ever seen from her: a peeking corner number, surreptitious in its authenticity.

At the airport, where they arrive several hours early—and not the good, “getting a leg in the crowd” several hours—they sequester themselves in a corner, where Damian has time to explain the basics of credit card and mobile phone usage to Cassandra. She cannot wrap her mind around the numbers on the dialing screen, so Damian acquiesces to his expectations. Inputting the number that comes with his new phone into hers, he is able to instruct her, albeit painstakingly, how to use the colors and shapes on the screen in order to navigate her way to it.

"We need a cover story," Damian tells her, as he hands her back her phone.

Cassandra nods, and looks at him. It is an expectant look.

"You're not going to be of any help, are you?"

Giving him another thumbs up, she clasps her phone in her hands and turns it on, again. At her behest, upon learning one could customize the background, he had searched "pretty wallpapers," hers was now a cartoon of a young girl cupping a daisy in her palms, lifting it toward the sun.

"Well," Damian says with a sniff, "I am accustomed to working solo. I suppose this shan't be any different."

The screen on Cassandra's phone goes dark. She presses the home button again, and resumes her mesmerization with the resulting image.

"I hope you have the presence of mind to be listening right now," says Damian. "Because once I figure this out I am not going to repeat it."

Cassandra doesn't look up.

"Fine, then," says Damian. "Rot for all I care. I guess the traumatic brain injury you incurred as a young girl that caused your muteness won't be something you'll be able to tell people about. What a shame, that car crash was, the one that killed your parents while they were traveling in Pakistan. What luck you had, to be adopted by my tenderhearted and adoring grandfather."

She still does not look up, but Damian senses her stilling.

"You can reinvent your whole life," says Damian. "You should take the opportunity."

Splaying her hands out with her fingers wide, Cassandra curls her fingers up into claws and drags them toward her. She shifts to point at him, pauses for a minute, and then makes the OK sign, but doesn't touch her forefingers together right away. When she does, it looks like she's pinching something.

_I want you to pick._

Damian looks at Cassandra. Her eyes burn like flint shrieking against steel. It would be an insult to ask her if she was sure, so he doesn't.

"OK," says Damian. "I will pick."

He doesn't change much, really. Basing lies in the truth is always an easier process than inventing them from scratch.

His name is Damian al Malak. He was born in Chilas on 9 August 1998, to Melisande al Malak, who had had a tryst with a man named Bruce Kane while he was meeting with her father and longtime business associate, Dusan al Malak. It is where he grew up, but he traveled frequently on behalf of his grandfather and their company. He is coming to the United States on one of these travels; to Gotham City because of its proximity to several major corporations.

Her name is Cassandra Woosan. She was born on 26 January 2005, to David Kane, the brother of Bruce Kane and another business associate of Dusan al Malak, and her eponymous mother, Cassandra Woosan. Her mother went into traumatic labor, after both of her parents got into a car crash while they were visiting the al Malaks in Chilas. They did not survive. Baby Cassandra was named for her mother by Damian's grandfather, who adopted her as tribute to his friend and uncle of his grandchild. She developed dysarthria, rendering her mute.

Cassandra is also heavily involved in Dusan al Malak's business, and made a business partner of Damian. The two of them had grown up together, thus saw each other fit to work with.

Telling Cassandra of his brainchild is what finally prompts her to put her phone in her pocket. She walks up to Damian, and cups his face. With her other hand, she makes a "c," puts it to her cheek, and twists it back and forth.

_Cousins._

"Yes," says Damian, "I suppose this makes us cousins. Don't let it get to your head."

Cassandra withdraws, but not before giving him a pat on the cheek.

"Are you mocking me, Cass?" Damian asks.

Giving him a thumbs up, she goes back to her phone. Damian scoffs, and beckons her to go check their luggage. He slips the file on the boy who would have been his brother from the trunk before handing it to the attendant. Cassandra throws him a curious glance.

"Did my mother not debrief you?" he asks.

Forefingers to thumb.

"What a fool's journey, this shall make. Don't trip in the dark."

It takes them three hours to get through security, and leaves them another five to sit on their hands while their flight arrives. The time is mostly passed by meditating, observing the body of the airport for suspicious characters, and turning over worst case-scenarios in his head. Not once does Cassandra unhand her phone.

Damian knows, had Talia, or Grandfather, or whoever this part of the plan had been delegated to wanted, they could have had Damian and Cassandra seated next to each other on the plane. Their tickets place them seventeen rows and three seats apart. Grandfather had always been astute when it came to predicting Damian; he finds himself resigned to this particular pull of his whims.

 _You are partaking in man's greatest inanity,_ he whispers. _Look at you, foolish boy._

Frosty breath spiderwebs along the back of his neck, at those words, still as fit to brittle his bones as it was in his childhood days. He turns to Cassandra, who makes a peace sign with her hand. Putting it to her eye, she proceeds to jerk it outward, and then shifts her fingers to point at Damian

_See you later._

“Bye for now, Cass.”

Having always been in the habit of shutting the window dressing if he is in the window seat, he does not break tradition. When they take off, he is none the wiser as they eclipse Islamabad, behemothic but so, so beautiful. He does not see the grays of buildings become nebulous wisps, nor the brilliant city condense into a single flame.

No, what he chooses to let encompass his world is the file splayed in his hand. He has to be clandestine, to shoot the occasional furtive glance at his seatmates to ensure that they are not visually eavesdropping.

C.C. Haly and Norton Bros. Circus is a family owned business, founded in 1939 by Garrison Haly. Damian leaves through several clippings depicting its evolution through time, from a modest series of acts to a sprawling group of numbers and an extensive midway. John Grayson, according to a slipshod police report and an adoption certificate, came to be a member of Haly's when, as many children were wont to do, he ran away to the circus. His ascent to the status of their most prolific acrobat was expeditious. Photographs of diaries reveal Marie Lloyd’s family has been with Haly’s Circus since Nazi Germany’s occupation of France; they had provided them shelter against the persecution of Romani people.

Together, in 2005, the same year as their wedding, they became the Flying Graysons. Their act was what eventually bolstered Haly’s up to the same playing field as bigwigs such as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Cirque du Soleil.

Their son, Richard Grayson, according to what was with certitude an illegal copy of his birth certificate, was born on 24 March 2007, in Edirne, Turkey. The only record of him after that, medically, is from when he was seven; it is for a hospital visit to treat two broken tibias, and a fractured fibula and ulna. A League spy estimates him to be 1.5 meters tall, and to weigh 34 kilograms. According to a newspaper clipping, he is one of the five living people who have successfully performed a quadruple somersault.

There are articles from over a dozen sources detailing the deaths of John and Mary Grayson. A “tragic accident,” a “ghastly spectacle,” a “bewitching performance that took a macabre turn.” Only two of the articles mention Richard Grayson by name, and neither say anything as to his fate.

There are, in fact, no papers in the file that say anything as to his fate. When Damian flips past the last page, there is a sticky note adhesed to the manila, on which is inked, “Current location unknown.”

The airplane's speaker system emits a pleasant beep; the voice that follows leaves an infuriating sense of gemütlich in its wake.

“We’ve successfully crossed the Atlantic, and have hit land. Welcome to the United States of America.”

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. Damian snaps the file shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it for this episode of american sign language with cass cain. ;)
> 
> addendum: asl is much more multifaceted than it is being given credit for, here. because cass has a hard time with words, she uses it to convey simple ideas. if you're interested in learning asl, there are a lot of great, free resources on the internet! they're way cooler than duolingo, let me tell you.


	2. Ring Around the Rosy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shifting his grip so that the knife’s handle grazes his palm, Damian lets his muscles relax, and then retense. He shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, and meet’s Grayson’s gaze dead-on.
> 
> “I’m here to dispatch you,” he says.
> 
> “‘Dispatch’ me,” Grayson repeats. He has gone stiff again; his fringe hoods his eyes. “So they’re getting rid of me.” His voice is steadily rising. “Your bad people kill my parents. Your good people take me away from my home, because you think they are unfit caretakers. You lock me up in here, because you say there is no room for me in _your_ system. And now you’re going to toss me out like a piece of _trash? Well, golly gee whiz, color me flattered! ”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like i should have said this last chapter, so concerning talia: i decided to go with her à la grant morrison retconned characterization.

> “... Let’s bring this to Mateo. Mateo?”
> 
> “Thanks, Carrie. Good evening, Gotham City. I’m Mateo Muñoz, and this is GCNN. We’re here outside of the 12th Precinct with an alarming update on the serial killer who’s been taking Gotham City by storm. Here with us we have Commissioner Gordon, who’s going to get us up to speed. Commissioner?”
> 
> “Yes.” There is a pause; a throat clears. “Thank you, Mr. Muñoz. There has… been another murder today, unfortunately.” Another pause; the shifting of cloth. “Naomi Williams, a thirty-two-year-old woman, was found floating in Gotham Bay this evening by the crew members of a cargo boat. Her husband identified her a few hours ago.”
> 
> “Her family and he have our condolences.”
> 
> “As they do ours, as well as the nine other families affected by this tragedy.”
> 
> “Do you have any suspects, at this point?”
> 
> “We’ve ruled out most of Gotham City’s rogue gallery, as well as this being a result of organized crime. Hopefully the initial panic regarding the perpetrator being the Joker has been quelled. I assure you, he’s still in Arkham. Actually… our officers are currently following a lead that indicates that Abuse might be responsible for this.”
> 
> “That’s a controversial statement you’ve made right there, Commissioner.”
> 
> “I’m well aware who Abuse is to the people of Gotham City. But the fact of the matter is that this isn’t the first time he’s killed, and this string of murders looks a lot like his last one.”
> 
> “Does the GCPD have any other suspects at this time?”
> 
> “Pardon?”
> 
> “Sir, I’m wondering if your officers have found any other suspects.”
> 
> “... No. No, we haven’t.”

Cassandra shuts off the television.

“And that,” Damian says, “is how to get away with murder.”

Taking one last thumb through what is now a well worn file on Richard Grayson—featuring Post-It Notes, highlighter, and several additional sheets of paper lined with compact commentary—Damian shoves it to the side, pushes his chair out, and shifts his weight to stand. Cassandra puts her hands into fists with her thumbs sticking out, and shimmies them back and forth.

_Brag._

Then, she makes like she is going to stick up her middle fingers, but raises her index fingers, instead. Placing them by her waist, she drags them up in a circular motion.

_Evil._

Sighing, Damian lays his hand back out on the table, splaying his fingers, and counting. _One, two, three, four, thumb. Thumb, four, three, two, one._

“That woman was an active pedophile, Cassa—Cass. I swore to you I wouldn’t use innocents for our coverup, and I have stuck by my word.”

 _Evil_ , Cassandra signs, again.

He invents a short riff using his fingers.

“We needed to do this,” he tells her. “If we had only killed Nora Jean Johansson, then Batman would have had a segway right into the motive, no matter how we staged it.”

Shifting, his back rubs against the sweater hung from the chair, and their most recent purchase: a backpack. She’s peeling away at his skin, inch by inch. Her eyes hold power unbeheld.

“He’s a clever man,” Damian defends. “A mooncalf, through and through, but his intelligence quotient is high enough to grant him membership to IHIQS threefold.”

Cassandra blinks at him, about as incredulous as a seal who’s had a shoe shoved under its nose.

Damian tries again, and says, “Our modus operandi needs to look like that of a violent psychopath. He will be suspicious anyway, but it will be much harder to follow up on that suspicion with the sheer volume of the caseload.”

Touching her fingers to the bottom of her palm and bringing it to her mouth, she takes her thumb and index finger and makes them snap like crocodile jaws.

_Coward._

“ _Cassandra,_ ” says Damian. “We’ve been through this. _The woman would have talked._ Perhaps not to the police, but Bruce Wayne would eventually catch wind of the fact that she was Richard Grayson’s social worker, and when he did, he would have gone to her, and found out that someone had killed him. Furthermore, he would notice her affrighted disposition. Later that night, _Batman_ would question her about the death, and she would crack. This way we can make it look like her murder and Grayson’s murder are separate events.”

He braces himself on the table, and stands up. When Cassandra’s hands come together, presumably to say, _My name is_ Cass, or _You are an unmitigated, heartless bastard_ , Damian brings his right hand sharply down on his flat left palm.

_Stop._

Her hands do not still, and Damian is not so cruel as to silence what she has of a voice by speaking over her; he glowers at her instead.

Cassandra, louring right back, taps her forefingers to her thumb. She then points at him, and brings _her_ right hand sharply down on her flat left palm, mimicking what had been his motion.

_No, you stop._

Damian does not stop.

“So we do away with many people, of many walks of life, interconnected in many ways, to throw him off. He will sniff out a swindle—unlike this city’s… pillars of justice, he is not fool enough to believe that half-baked vigilante is responsible—but will not be able to figure out which direction it is coming from. In fact, he will likely presume that we are pursuing our own brand of vigilante justice, considering that despite the fact the _world_ doesn’t know the sins of these people, his investigation will yield the brunt of them.”

Cassandra takes her dominant hand, points his index finger upward, and brings the rest of his fingers to the thumb to form a circle. Using it to tap her nose, she narrows an eye at him.

_Dick._

“Call me all the names you like. I’m still right, and you look the part of the belligerent fool,” Damian tells her.

For how vehemently she does so, Cassandra might as well be slamming her forefingers to her thumb.

**_No._ **

She puts her d-hand to her nose, again, but this time she follows it up by circling her hands loosely, and then holds one arm like she’s supporting a baby, while bringing the other arm down toward it in a salute motion.

_Dick, gray, son._

“Dick Grayson,” Damian realizes. 

Cassandra nods solemnly, and signs _gray_ and _son,_ again.

“I _do_ hope you’re joking, Cass,” Damian says. “Dispatching the boy is our objective. When you chose to come with me, you repledged your loyalty to the League. Did you really think that just because my mo— _Talia_ —and I had a row, that I’d abandoned my principles for an idyllic and virtuous life? Because I haven’t.”

Snapping the file open, he pages through it until he comes upon a photograph of Grayson. In the picture, he is of his preteen years; the date “April 2020” inked on the side confirming thirteen in particular. Grayson is grinning. One of his incisors is missing. He’s in mid flight, muscles tight like stretched cord as he reaches outward, perhaps for the trapeze bar, perhaps to grasp the universe by the hands.

Damian tears it in half.

“This boy has not done anything. You are right about that,” he says, and begins to pace about. “Death is not about _deserving_ , though, Cassandra. Life catapults us toward it; we can fall at any moment if the right force arrests our momentum.”

Even from across the room he can feel her gaze tear great shreds in his skin. He shrugs her off and bears the wounds proudly.

“Recently, a woman acquaintance of mine died in childbirth, because she did not have access to healthcare. So did her baby. She was a good woman, and her child did not have a chance to be a bad one. But they both died. Nobody chose that. People die, who don’t deserve it. What’s one more?”

Cassandra holds up one finger, and then makes a wide motion with her hands. It’s no official sign, but her gist is clear: _one means everything._

Scoffing, Damian tosses both halves of Grayson’s picture to the side.

“I’m a harbinger of death, Cassandra. It’s what I do. I’m not God; I’m not omniscient; I don’t decide whether or not a person’s life is worth living. I simply do what I am told.”

Cassandra makes a series of deliberate signs, in this way, in this order:

  1. She points at Damian.



_You’re_

  1. She forms her hand into a fist, with the thumb extending out abnormally. She places this under her chin, and then jerks her hand forward by several centimeters.



_not_

  1. She holds her wrists out, and rotates them with jeuge.



_letting_

  1. She points at herself.



_me_

  1. She puts four fingers up and taps her chin twice.



_speak._

“And I don’t intend to,” says Damian.

It is a gross renegment on his previous resolution, but this girl, she turns his blood to seething bromine. 

“I hate to quote my mother, but get off your high horse, _assassin_. You must think highly of yourself, having only killed—what? Once over the course of your training? Twice?”

Cassandra closes her eyes. Damian knows she can feel the weight of his gaze on her, but she does not open them; scrunches them tighter, for it.

“Bloodstains don’t wash off, Cassandra,” Damian tells her; his voice weeps like water lilies. “Embrace what you already are, and embrace what you are not. You do not abuse children; you are not a rapist; you do not traffick humans, nor do you sit pretty on a throne and watch your people’s famine. What you are... ? You are a murderer. You can’t take that back.”

When Cassandra opens her eyes, they are wet. Damian does not find himself moved.

“I’m going to go do what needs to be done,” he says. “If it assuages your pain, any, I’ll do my best to ensure his swift departure from this world.”

He pulls on his sweater and the backpack, and walks from their hotel room.

What needed to be said, that is what he said. And that is what he tells himself in the cacophonous silence of the hallway as the witching hour approaches, as the elevator walls press into him.

 _When Cassandra opens her eyes, they are wet._ One of the pictures, in one of the newspaper clippings in Damian’s file, had featured another photograph of Grayson. In it, he was crying, too. He was joined by those who Damian had not dispatched expeditiously this week:

“Please, don’t kill me. I have a family. Please, I’ll do _anything_. _I don’t deserve this._ ”

In all of their eyes, there was a knowing, however, a featuring of the intrinsic knowledge of the summation of their life’s wrongdoings. In their tears, they shedded their misdeeds. Damian is doomed to a week with weepy people, it seems. At the very least where he’s headed is far too cruel a place for tears to be tolerated. The vicissitudes of life, it seems.

But that, Nora Jean Johansson had said, is where she had stuck Grayson. Her confusion had been ardently _pathetic_ , when he came to her to query as to his location. She hadn’t even known who he was talking about, at first; when he mentioned the circus, the dumbstriken look on her face had gone dark.

“Oh,” she had said, “ _that_ boy.”

And she had proceeded to tell him how she had sent Grayson to Gotham City Boys Juvenile Detention Center. After he had divested her of two fingers, she admitted to having personal motive in this; said that he disturbed her.

It took another for her to divulge the origins of this perturbation.

“Monkey child,” she had called him. “That creepy little monkey child.” And then she asked, “What are you going to do with him?”

“Tt. He shall certainly have a less painful death than you,” Damian had said, before drawing a line across her carotid artery and windpipe. 

She had gurgled; Nora Jean Johansson had choked on her own blood. Damian wonders if he should tell Grayson that, before he dies.

Affording an approaching busboy a curt nod as he makes to enter the elevator Damian is now exiting, as the door rolls open, he steps over the crack and lets his loafers dig into the carpeting.

“You’re out late,” the busboy says.

It is not an accusation; rather, it is pleasant, an attempt at decorative conversation. Damian presses his lips together.

“And you’re working late, but you don’t see me inquiring as to details of your personal life,” he says, not particularly careful.

Face coloring, the busboy presses into the elevator, a scowl tapping at the sides of his cheeks.

“You could just say you’re not in the mood to talk,” he says, and then quickly makes the addendum, “sir.”

“OK,” Damian gives. “I’m ‘not in the mood to talk.’” He considers his words, and decides to make his own addendum: “Have a pleasant evening.”

“Yeah,” the busboy calls after him. “You too, I guess.”

Damian has the good sense not to nod at the individual behind the front desk. 

Stepping out into the street, he allows the full brunt of Gotham City smog to hit him. Invariably, during the course of the last week, his nose has felt itchy and clogged by its filth. It's an affliction, the remembrance of his home in the big city; it invariably twists his arm behind his back. 

Gothamites carry themselves a certain way. He has no data on the rest of the United States’ population to support any sort of postulate, but is struck by the presumption that most others do not. It’s a city walk, perhaps: he’s seen similar in places where needles scrape the sky and metal callouses the clouds. It’s also a different walk; it is the walk of a people trodden down. 

“I’m nobody to hurt,” it says.

This is a privileged part of the city, and yet people walk so. Gotham City is a cruel mistress, it seems. Damian does not know what his father sees, here. This place is a suppurating wound. The people bustle, and the wound grows. He catches the glimpse of a woman, as they walk by each other on the street; he watches him stare at Damian, look from him to his backpack.

If she thinks such things, she should at least follow through.

The people bustle by. The wound is bleeding. Buildings mold into themselves like damp putty, the windows run, like watercolor dripping from an idle brush. The people walk, with long, Gumby feet. It all goes… myopic. Thus is the nature of Gotham City.

GBYDC cusps the outskirts of the city proper. It’s a blemish, really, if there could be such a thing as a blemish in this cesspool. Blocks of gray stagger their way up and over unmoved concrete and dust. For a place that is supposed to have the second-highest crime rate in the country, it’s small. The miasma of those overpacked and ill-fated slaps him halfheartedly.

The world never lost its color, but color is still bleeding back into it, somehow. He watches; it is a reverent watching.

“When there’s trouble,” he murmurs to himself, “you know who to call.”

To say that breaking into places is an art is giving the task too much credit. Really, it’s the kicked puppy of spy-ish undertaking: a systematic endeavor.

Damian pulls several leather gloves from the backpack, and layers them over his hands, one by one. Each pair must be bigger than the last. It is a clumsy solution, but he needs to scale the barbed wire fence. It takes the maneuvering of a spider to accomplish these sorts of tasks, or perhaps a frog: it’s all about leaping in the right places. He grasps a handful of mesh, and pivots his foot to give himself the leverage to get the first leg up.

When Damian was seven years old, his grandfather left him at the base of Nanda Parbat, the mountain, and welded a bracelet to his wrist that left him impervious to the magic that would allow him to cross over into Nanda Parbat, the city without first climbing to the top. He scaled meters in great numbers over the course of several days, with minimal supplies, before finally succumbing to the elements. He had been whipped bloody for his failure.

Experiences he is subjected to by Grandfather are invariably painful, but once in a while, they come in handy. This is one such a time; he shins up the fence with ease, and uses a well-timed combination of a contortion and a flip to launch himself over the barbed wire. 

Dodging the security cameras is a sad affair, if only for the ease with which he accomplishes the task. There are so many blind spots that the paradigm should rather be: where are the _sighted_ spots. He walks across the courtyard as casually as he would as if he was a powerful prisoner.

Damian is far too large to fit into the vents; since he is a prudent man he sees there is a far more prudent way in: he walks through the front door. There is no cop as tall as him in this building, but when he finds the closest he can get, to one, he chokes him out, and strips him down to assume his uniform. Shoving his own clothes into his backpack, he leaves the officer behind, after ensuring that he has plausible defensive wounds. His ribs _crunch!_ under his own boot.

Disrespecting the dead for a setup, and breaking whatever he had left of Cassandra’s trust. Genius move, Damian. He glowers at the wall. It is the source of his woes, and if he glares hard enough they will eviscerate themselves and go crawling into some bleak corner. Disturbingly, as his gaze roves its length, he finds—not sourced from the officer he just killed—bloodstains, a vulgar shade of brown when contrasted to the walls painted with sea foam green. There are also splatters of dried food, and what looks to be a burgeoning mold.

Damian scoffs, and treads the hallways using steps with more weight behind them than he has allowed himself in some time. Flitting in and out of the line of sights of cameras, he is fastidious in making sure they catch no glimpse of his face. He dodges officers here and there who will be of no help to his cause; too sharp or too dull will do him no good. Breathe unto this Earth a being of average inclinations.

He spots a likely suspect dawdling by the visitation area, her snuffing out a cigarette in a plastic cup of water, stuffing a fist in her mouth to suppress a yawn. What draws his attention is the deliberateness with which she executes each move.

There is shifting underneath the table. _Ah._

“Hello,” greets Damian, pulling back his shoulders and rolling into his best blasé walk.

Angling his shoulder and nudges at the crinkles of his uniform so that the name on his badge isn’t visible, he sinks into an artful slouch.

“Do you need something?” the officer asks, squinting at him.

“Yes,” Damian says, “Can I ask you a favor...” he scans her bosom for her badge, “Officer Hannity.” 

Officer Hannity’s face goes alight, and he sees a flash of her teeth.

“Look,” she says, “either you’re here to wheedle me into doing your job for you, or you’re here to hit on me. The answer, either way, is _no._ ”

He represses the urge to click his tongue.

“I’m looking for a prisoner, actually,” he says.

Officer Hannity coalesces; goes absolutely still.

“So you’re one of those,” she says, cooly.

She thinks—

“Tell me what I want to know,” Damian says; his voice comes out in puffs, like blasts of Arctic snow, “and I won’t report you for engaging in coitus on the job.”

Muffled cursing ensues from underneath the table, and Officer Hannity follows suit. Damian does his best to suppress an amorphous sensation of nausea.

“I hope you carry your bystander guilt to the grave,” he tells her, because he may not be the breed of monster she thinks she is setting loose on the world, but she thinks he is, and is giving him what he wants to know anyway.

“There are hundreds of kids here,” she says, eventually. “How do you even know I’ll know who you’re looking for.

Rather than deigning to entertain what she must think to be a riposte, Damian simply says, “I imagine you remember the circus boy.”

It is doubtless that had he said, “Richard Grayson,” Officer Hannity’s eyes would retain their buzzing sense of vacuousness, but, “circus boy,” that rings a bell.

She rattles off a room block and number.

“Thank you,” says Damian, and then, “I’m going to snap your neck, now.”

Her last words are an aborted scream; her associate’s, a cry of rage.

Batman will see through this with moments and a magnifying glass. Damian’s banking on the police department covering up the incident, and in the case that fails, making Grayson look like collateral itch-scratch killing rather than the target. If the social worker is to be believed, the boy had already tried to escape several times, so him being out and about in the hallways would not be so implausible.

He had thrown out working computer skills into the characterization of his fictional serial killer. It was the practical move, considering what the cameras looping or short-circuiting would indicate. His skill in hiding belies his skill in hiding. Still, this next maneuver will be tricky, if he does not execute it with precision.

Not even attempting to secret his way past any of the doors once he enters the portion of the detention center that houses its people, Damian stares resolutely forward; makes himself look comfortable and purposeful. Through the maze of hallways he trods, onward and onward, not particularly interested in letting this place perfuse his being.

Then, he is there. Grayson, opportunely, has a sleeping roommate. He looks like a wisp of dandelion fluff in his bleached white shirt and thick, yellow canvas pants. He’s plastered in bruises; a great, big plum of a black eye drips down his face. 

Damian steps out of sight of the camera, and waits. He times his breath to the ticking of a nearby clock, and counts up minutes: one, two, three, four, five.

“Hello, Richard Grayson,” Damian says.

The boy’s head snaps up like a spooked horse. He does not say anything, immediately, but scrunches his nose together in deep ponderance.

“Please,” Grayson tells him, and this next phrase, English, shows evidence of being painfully practiced, “leave me alone.”

“ _Would you rather we spoke French, or Spanish?”_ Damian asks.

Grayson’s face inspirits with all the vigor of having been struck by lightning. 

He babbles, for several moments, but eventually manages to burst out, in a tilt-a-whirl ride starring both, “You speak… holy mother of God you speak... _hi!_ ”

Damian raises an eyebrow.

“I do,” he admits, “I speak many languages.”

Grayson looks at him, and then looks at him again. If it’s at all possible for a boy who doesn’t even come up to the bottom of his ribcage to size him up, he does.

“ _Wait…_ ” he says, “How did you know those are what I usually speak in?” His eyes flash. “David wouldn’t tell you, I know he wouldn’t. He doesn’t talk to any of you _people._ ”

Damian opts for candor.

“I read your file,” he offers.

Tapping his feet in some indiscernible rhythm on the concrete, Grayson fingers at the unyielding cloth of his jumpsuit and says, more to himself than Damian. “I have a file.”

You have a file composed by members of one of the most lethal organizations in the world. Its leader wants you dead, because he wants to hurt a man who seeks to disrupt his eponymous “league of assassins,” who have historically been involved in murder, genocide, kidnapping, and money embezzlement, all in the name of saving the environment. Tonight, you are just another victim.

He would not say this, even if he was adroit enough in either of Grayson’s preferred languages to do so.

“You have a file,” Damian confirms. 

“So you care enough to do _that_ ,” Grayson says.

Damian palms the knife he slipped up his sleeve.

“Has not anyone told you not to ‘shoot the messenger?’” he asks.

“My dad told me to scream when strange people try to talk to me alone,” Grayson says, quietly. “And I don’t think you want me to do that. You look way too—” he says a word that Damian does not know, “—to be supposed to be here.”

“One can make oneself supposed to be anywhere, if one has the right attitude,” says Damian.

Grayson uncurls from the corner he’s sequestered himself in, just enough to shoot Damian a narrowed look.

“ _You’ve_ got a lot of attitude, speaking all formal like that.”

“I have Spanish grammatical convention on my side, colloquial halfwit.”

Grayson says, “You’d think you’d have better things to do with your time than go and insult a kid half your age.”

“I am less than half your age,” Damian informs him. “And—” he tries to begin, but finds himself stymied. He pauses; tries to collect himself; kamikazes his way into a spotless mind. His cheeks color.

Blinking up at him, Grayson shifts so that his arms rest on his knees.

“Hey,” he says, “maybe we should switch to a language we’re both good at.”

“I am fine this way,” Damian says.

“I speak,” says Grayson, raising his voice to talk over him, “a little bit of a lot of languages. I’m fluent in French, Spanish, German, and Turkish, so if you speak any of those that’d be convenient. I know enough to get by in some others. I had to. You should tell me which ones you know; maybe we can compromise on something.”

He pauses.

“There’s also... my maman…” he trails off for a moment; his eyes are riveting, in this moment, they shriek like the ghosts of their heedless world, where hands and bodies and beings shove right through their incorporeal forms. After a moment, they go dark, and then flicker. “My _daj_ spea—spoke to me in Romani, sometimes.”

The boy is stiff like he’s fit to be slapped. Damian forces his facial muscles to relax, and his posture to soften.

“I do not subscribe to antiziganism,” he says; he still speaks in Spanish. “I should take no such vendetta against you.”

“Well... you’re kind of a jerk,” Grayson blurts, biting his lip. “So I needed to make sure.”

The line between “jerk” and “subscribes to flagrantly racist ideals that still pervade Europe” is one drawn thickly, but he does not say that.

Damian continues not to speak; Grayson grows of jittery disposition. He can tell that his mind is as wiped as his own had been moments ago by the fact that he does not bring up a change in language again.

“What is it that you want,” he asks; more demands, but there is a contriteness to it. “All of the workers here have been… they call me illiterate, or slow. You’ve come here, offered to speak in languages you aren’t even fluent in, and had a conversation with me without calling me a name or telling me to ‘shut my mouth and do what I’m told.’”

Shifting his grip so that the knife’s handle grazes his palm, Damian lets his muscles relax, and then retense. He shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, and meet’s Grayson’s gaze dead-on.

“I’m here to dispatch you,” he says.

“‘Dispatch’ me,” Grayson repeats. He has gone stiff again; his fringe hoods his eyes. “So they’re getting rid of me.” His voice is steadily rising. “Your bad people kill my parents. Your good people take me away from my home, because you think they are unfit caretakers. You lock me up in here, because you say there is no room for me in _your_ system. And now you’re going to toss me out like a piece of _trash? Well, golly gee whiz, color me flattered!_ ”

Damian does not understand what he says next; he presumes they are expletives by the glower on his face. The child, or rather, teenager—Grayson is the smallest here by far—that Grayson shares this room with begins to stir. Slipping in behind him, Damian presses the knife to his throat.

“I’d be quiet, if I were you,” he says. “I can hurt you in ways medical care can’t fix, that will make you die a much more protracted death than I was planning to bestow upon you. Now,” he angles the knife upward, so it tucks under Grayson’s chin, and hugs the skin until it bleeds. “You are going to answer my question.”

Damian had expected him to fight, but he is still; even hangs limp, so that Damian must hold him up to prevent the knife from driving into the soft divot of skin below his tongue. They sink so that Damian’s knees are bent, his body angled toward the ground. Incongruently, he can feel Grayson’s clenched fists bumping against his shins.

“What’s your question?” Grayson croaks.

“What is it that you meant when you said that people ‘killed your pare—’”

Grayson’s fisted hands unclench to grasp his legs. He extends himself so that he is just enough above parallel degrees to the ground so he can hover. He begins to shift downward, and then kicks his legs up in a flip angled toward Damian’s neck.

Snatching him out of the air, Damian slips the knife back into his uniform and slams Grayson to the ground, pressing his weight onto his elbow and knee joints so that he is not able to move without threat of a dislocation.

“I will ask again,” he says. “What did you mean when you said that your parents were killed?”

Grayson pants: in, out, in. He is far too athletic for it to be out of exertion. Damian watches as his breath mists. He applies careful pressure to his neck once his breathing goes even, to make it impossible for him to scream.

“ _Why do you care?_ ” he spits, “ _Why do you care—?_ ” he says something else, that once again Damian does not know. He suspects it can be equated to something along the lines of “you cop bastard.”

“If I am going to kill you,” Damian says, “you will have no misconceptions before your death. This uniform does not belong to me; I am no officer of the law. I come from an independent organization who seeks to eliminate you because of your connection to Bruce Wayne.”

If there were a “five stages of shock,” that is how Damian would describe Grayson’s current facial metamorphosis.

“Bruce _who_ now?”

This boy was to be killed for a man he did not even know; had not even met. To call this irony would be to understate the sadism bleaching this twist of fate.

“Bruce Wayne is a rich, influential man; he intends to take you in as his ward, your willingness permitting.” Bruce Wayne is my father; he wants to be yours.

An indescribable sort of ripple canters along Grayson’s face. He shifts, squirming in his pinioned position.

“I don’t want some rich man’s charity,” he snarls, “I want my parents back! You want the answer to your question? Some Italian bastard had them killed over extortion money! He thought, ‘Fair’s square: if Mr. Haly won’t pay me, I’ll take away his biggest source of income.’ He killed my parents. _He killed my parents._ He _killed them_.”

Grayson’s voice is thin; a hoarse, hushed undertone. With wet eyes and sweaty bangs, he looks all the part of a sad, sodden newspaper left out in the rain. His edges seep into the ground, and his dark hair, his blue eyes, they bleed into the rest of his face like runny egg yolk.

“He killed them. He killed them he killed them he _killedthemhe—_ ”

Falling limp under Damian’s grip, he blinks. Water, which has pooled in his canti, collects in his eyelashes. None drips down his face.

“I see,” says Damian. Grayson is an ugly crier.

Grayson asks him, “Are your parents still alive?”

The roommate stirs; lets out a great, big _zzz!_ , and turns over onto his other side. His hand flops off the side of his cot.

“No,” says Damian, and then, “I never had any to lose.”

 _“Oh,”_ says Grayson. Not, “But everyone has parents,” not, “Why would you say something like that?” He says, “ _Oh.”_

Damian takes the knife, and tucks it back under his chin. Grayson is—acquiescent.

“You know,” he says, “if you keep scowling so hard, your face will freeze like that.”

“All the better to scare you with.”

“You don’t scare me,” he promises. His eyes are free; they hide nothing. He breathes in quick gasps, but they are steady; calm. This boy is one with what is. “Do I get...” he starts, again. “... a last wish, Mr. Assassin?”

From youth, Damian has been trained in deft control of the fingers, principally through musical instruments. His fingers, though, they tense, without him thinking about it, and the knife drudges into Grayson’s throat.

“I’m not a charity,” says Damian.

Grayson speaks again, in his voice that has not yet broken, and his voice that has not yet been beaten down. “Where are bad guy moral crises when you need them,” he laments. His voice tiptoes; he’s not quite sure whether the meadow he’s just touched foot on is a minefield or not. 

“You’re taking to your imminent death remarkably well,” Damian points out. “So you’ll excuse me for saving my crisis for someone who actually seems in want of it.”

Grayson's lips thin.

“How’s this for a desperate, sad little orphan boy?" he challenges. The air around him curls; it goes black and unyielding. "I want you..." he says, "to kill the man who killed my parents.”

Letting out yet another obnoxious snore, the roommate’s face rolls over. Drool drips from his chin. Grayson’s chin is dripping, too; it’s his tears. They have fallen.

“Say something,” he demands. “Either say something, or do what you’re supposed to and slit my throat right here and now.”

For the life of him, Damian does not know why he complies.

"Your dying wish, as I am about to kill you, is for me to kill a man on your behalf? That's what you want, more than anything?" Damian asks.

"That's what I want, more than anything," Dick Grayson parrots; his big, doleful eyes make him look more like a scorned hound than a thirteen-year-old boy.

Then, he screams.


	3. Swallow a Summer Makes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello Mr. al Malak,
> 
> Great! I’ll let Mr. Wayne know; he’ll be there! You’ve been very flexible, and on behalf of all of WE, I’d like to thank you for that.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Tim Drake, EA  
> Wayne Enterprises, Inc.  
> timothydrake@wei.com  
> +1 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

When Damian slits Dick Grayson’s throat, the boy’s eyes are as wide as a starchaser, a sonata for the universe’s most intimate matter. He doesn’t have time to say anything, before he begins gurgling on his own blood.

Damian is no fool; after he does this, he makes his escape. He does not look back. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry, and all that. Perhaps were not this institution’s employees blundering numbskulls, his duck-and-cover would not have sailed so smoothly; fortunately for Damian, the greater part of the Earth is made up of such people. It’s elementary to slip in and out of their gazes, to look like he belongs.

The crowd migrates; Damian sidles through the final door, and switches clothing in a nearby bush. He ducks in between pedestrians, crosses unnecessary streets and treads blocks far from the hotel Cassandra and he are staying at. It takes him approximately two hours to make his way back.

When he arrives, he discovers that:

  1. Cassandra is not there.
  2. She left a parting gift.



On the counter of their kitchenette preens an Edible Arrangement, or something of the like. Damian suspects Cassandra made it herself; the cuts are far too intricate for any company to bother with. It is entirely composed of strawberries: split open at the seams and diced into blossoms and spiky leaves. In the center of the arrangement, a knife postures, erect. It gores a single strawberry, dead center. The guts of the thing splosh outward.

Damian snorts. Would it not be a waste of food, he would trash it. Instead, he opens the little refrigerator plugged in under the counter, pushes aside several varieties of soft beverages, and slides the platter in neatly.

Turning away, he settles on the floor; the bed looks too lush to even attempt to grapple with. Then, he goes to sleep. 

Damian sits, cross-legged, in a field of daisies. Across from him sits the girl from Cassandra’s phone screen background; instead of a mouth and eyes she has gaping maws. The skin around them sucks itself inward, deeper and deeper, perhaps in a similar physical concept to a black hole.

“Get out of my sight, godforsaken child,” the girl says, in Talia’s voice. Her face morphs, and then she has long hair like his mother's, shares the slope of her nose and the shade of her lipstick. Her white dress fizzles and hisses, before metamorphosing into a green demon. With eyes and teeth of its own, it is a novel sort of horrific creature.

It hisses, _“You have murdered your Abel, foul Cain. Wallow in your disgrace!”_ then begins munching on the universe's fabric, encroaching on Damian’s space. His heart attempts to take flight from his chest; it wants to run; so does he. However, he is rooted in place. He is devoured.

His grandfather sits before him; Damian’s fingers are splayed out on the table. The world around them writhes and moans; Dick Grayson’s all-seeing eyes dot the landscape.

“Know that you have earned this,” he says. Ra’s al Ghul picks up his left hand, grasps his pinky finger, and with diligent punctiliousness, dislocates it. Damian’s hand reels backward in protest; this only exacerbates the pain of the pinkie, still gripped by Grandfather.

The fingers become worms—strawberry worms, with soft, useless mouths that slick against Damian’s skin. The world softens and bends, like a Salvador Dahli. This kafkaesque monster embraces Damian. He lets it, at first, but the contact becomes too much. He needs out. He needs—out. Beginning to squirm, he tries to dislodge himself from the worm’s maw. Its mushy jaw begins to ossify. It squeezes him, like he’s an orange fit to be pulped.

Jolting awake, Damian forward-rolls into a fighting stance. He launches himself to his feet.

The room is—still. Nothing stirs. The only interruption to the cacophonous silence are intermittent whimpers. Damian scans the room, grip tightening around the knife he had shoved under his pillow.

Grayson and Cassandra lie curled up on the floor, Cassandra, tucked into herself in the corner, and Grayson, sprawled in the middle of the room. His stomach and neck are exposed. Thick, dark stitches criss-cross it; he looks like a macabre but candid take on Frankenstein’s monster. Like a movie director had decided they didn’t want to pull any punches. But he breathes.

She would have had to have been tracking him the whole time, to have pulled this off. They do not know each other nearly well enough to infer each other’s actions. Damian idly wonders how much trouble he would be in if he offed her, too.

He cold-shoulders the queasy sensation that thought leaves in his gut.

As much a tantrum as Cassandra will throw, Grayson has to go. Damian adjusts his grip on the knife, leaving it in an optimal position to stab between the cervical vertebrae. He looms over him, parsing through the best way to adjust his body without waking him.

It is too late for that, as it turns out. Grayson’s eyelids twitch. He makes bleary noises, and soft whines. Eventually, he blinks.

“Msthr… ‘Ssassin?” he asks. His fists make their best attempt at clenching, then unclenching.

“Msthr. ‘Ssassin,” he repeats. It’s not a question this time. Grayson squishes his face, biting down on his lip _hard._ “Ouww… hurts. _Jerk.”_

Damian finds himself hovering, nonplussed. With a dogged grunt, Grayson attempts to move his mouth again.

“My… psharents,” he says, he manages, albeit exaggeratedly. A real, for real hoot.

Narrowing his eyes, Damian leans in, and crouches down beside his head. He takes Grayson by the chin, and tilts him up to meet his eyes. His rollick, upwards and backwards. There’s a sheen, to them.

“You,” he says, “are on your last legs. Your dead parents should be the least of your concerns.”

“Shut… _up,”_ Grayson retorts. “You don’t understand. _Parents.”_

Damian agrees. Vehemently.

“No, I don’t,” he says. “I should feed your brain to the birds. That’s what you are: a bird brain. Absolutely cuckoo.”

At that, Grayson lets out a mellow gurgling noise. Damian prepares himself to watch him choke on his own blood, and positions his knife to solicit a perfunctory death.

He realizes, after a few moments, when the noise repeats itself, and Grayson does not cough up red bile, that he is laughing.

“No,” he says. “Not a _cuckoo._ I’m a _robin.”_

Letting out a high-pitched, unabashed _giggle,_ Grayson makes an attempt at stretching out his arms to his sides. He moans, slightly, but doesn’t take the motion back. It makes him look a bit like a car crash victim, limbs all twisty. “I’m a robin. I fly, Mr. Assassin... you don’t understand. I _fly.”_

Damian presses Grayson’s arms back to his sides, with as little exacerbation to his injury as he can manage. The last thing he needs is for the boy to scream again. There is little resistance. Grayson blinks up at him, eyes so maudlin he rivals a drunk.

“Are you _high?”_ Damian demands.

Instead of answering, Grayson says, “I know what you did. _Softie.”_

If Damian doesn't keep a tight hinge on his jaw, he thinks he might start gritting it.

“You’re high. Was it the detention center who drugged you? Cassandra?”

“I’m not high. But you… you weren’t really trying to kill me. ‘Cause I’d be dead, wouldn’t I, Mr. Assassin?”

_The resounding hubbub of footsteps; the wide eyes of Grayson’s roommate. Grayson’s eyes, a thousand times wider, and threaded with the lifeblood of soul. He cuts, and that is all he can do. He does all he can do._

“Speak not of that which you don’t understand,” Damian snaps. “I should kill you where you lay. You’ve survived only on luck and the mercy of a bleeding heart.”

Grayson dissolves into a roaring fit of giggles, interspersed with gasps of pain. Damian has to splay him outward to keep him from clutching his stomach, and press his head to the ground lest he tear his slipshod stitches.

“Do it,” Grayson dares, “you won’t.”

He gasps for air; looks all the part of a beached fish. It is the beached fish whom the seagull first preys upon; Grayson is a regular self-saboteur.

“You test me,” Damian warns. “That is a mistake.”

Flopping this way and that, Grayson attempts to push his arms under him, and gain ground.

“We still… still—haven’t finished talking about. My parents,” he says.

“Don’t even think of getting up,” Damian warns, in a way that could almost perhaps be equated to exhorting, were he the merciful type. “Your days of tomfoolery are over for a while yet.”

Grayson summarily ignores him, pressing his palms to the floor, and attempting to leverage himself upward. His hands slip; he collapses. He dug his own grave, so Damian lets him. Still, he cups under his head to stop it slamming into the ground. A drugged _and_ concussed Grayson does not sound an auspicious combination.

“I don’t…” says Grayson, “... trust that girl.” He pauses, tastes his next words. Then, shoots Cassandra what he thinks must be a furtive glance. His tongue pokes from his mouth. “But she saved my life. I can’t waste that.”

Shooting upward with all the force of a coiled spring, his head lands in his knees; he gasps. “I have to make their deaths mean something! I have to!”

He gasps in great zeal, and his eyes go glassy, perhaps from one pain, perhaps from another. Burying his head deeper between his legs, he emits several whimpering noises.

“Move again, and I shall tie you down,” Damian threatens.

Grayson seems to be collecting himself. His breaths even, slowly, steadily, and he pokes his head up. Damian looks at him, looks at him and thinks that the veins under his eyes are an odd color.

“Has anyone ever told you,” Grayson asks, “that you're just about the most negative person they've ever met. They should put you in some record book.”

Damian cannot decide whether to sigh or snort, thus, he partakes in neither.

“I’ve been called many things less flattering,” he says, “but none so technical. One would think that a cretin such as yourself wouldn’t be able to conduct the sort of study that would prove that. You'd have to test a wide variety of subjects.”

Grayson’s eyes glint.

“Is that a challenge?” he queries, and Damian opens his mouth to say that no, it is not, so he should shut his own, but Grayson is already fifty meters across the track. “Cantankerous, arrogant, truculent, belligerent, pessimistic, intolerant, grumpy, dogmatic, cynical, fussy—”

And those are just the words Damian understands. Most of them, bursting forward in rapidfire French, do an absolutely outstanding grand jeté over Damian’s head.

“They do say that brevity is the wit of soul,” says Damian. “Your point has been made several times over.”

“I don’t think Shakespeare ever thought an assassin would use his writing to justify his evildoings,” says Grayson. “You know, this is actually kind of cool. I mean, how many people can say that they’ve met an assassin?”

“People who haven’t lived to tell the tale,” Damian sallies.

Grayson nods slowly, as if he is actually, seriously considering the words. “So who exactly is your boss?” he asks. “Why does he hate Bryce Rain so much? Like, who goes out of their way to off someone a guy barely knows just to get to him? That’s actually kind of scary. Imagine someone killing like. Everyone you ever talk to just to spite you. Pass a stranger in the street? Bam! They’re dead!”

 _“Bruce Wayne,_ you mean?” Damian asks. 

“Yeah,” Dick says, idly. “Him, sorry. But c’mon, Mr. Assassin, divulge your assassin-y secrets. It’s not like I have anybody to _tell.”_

Damian lets his eyes rove over the boy; his ghastly, eldritch appearance, the burgeoning infection already creeping up his wound.

“I work for,” he says, “an organization known as the League of Assassins.”

Grayson raises both of his eyebrows, high and wide.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Tt. I do not kid,” deadpans Damian. “You should know this, now. Would you like to hear the intimate workings of the plan that should have led to your demise or not?”

Shifting so that he holds his neck albatross-stiff, an awkward affair that would be the most painful position possible for a neck under ordinary circumstances, Grayson turns the rest of his body so that he faces Damian. They appraise each other, one of them crouched in anticipation of the strike; the other heedless of this.

“Yessiree,” says Grayson.

“Our organization does not typically dabble in matters so petty as to take out trifling targets such as yourself—instead, we seek to purge this Earth of those who abuse its gifts. However, Bruce Wayne has proven to be a particular thorn in—” Damian pauses, decides his relation to Ra’s al Ghul is impertinent information. “—our leader’s side. He believes that if we get rid of you, the man will straighten out his priorities. So to speak, mix sodium hypochlorite with hydrogen peroxide and hope for magnitude. He will take advantage of this weakness to enact one of innumerable plans he has been unable to with his presence looming over his head.”

Damian does not care to protect the man who fathered him’s secret. He doesn’t.

“How rich _is_ this guy, that he’s a threat to an _assassin_ organization?”

“I presume him to be second in net worth only to King Orin of Atlantis,” says Damian. “Now close your jaw before I wire it shut.”

 _“Atlantis...?”_ Grayson starts, but then he shuts his mouth. “You know what, I’m not even going to ask. Your leader guy sounds like a megalomanic dickwad, by the way.”

Damian takes a series of very deliberate actions, in this order: one, he steps closer toward Grayson, two, he slots his knife under his chin, three, he pops the first stitch on his neck. A single drop of blood dribbles from the maw of the wound, before cocooning itself in the fibers of Grayson’s t-shirt.

“Ow!” Grayson protests, hands uselessly scrabbling across the floor in their attempt to halt Damian’s handiwork.

“Do not presume to insult Ra’s al Ghul,” says Damian. “He is a man who has commanded armies, who has wiped out city-states and nations alike, who has manipulated events and entities to his liking in ways you don’t even know.”

“‘Ghoul’s Head?’” asks Grayson, crunching his face in a miffed expression of incomprehension, “Am I supposed to have heard of him?”

“In newscasts in most languages they refer to him as the _Demon’s_ Head, actually,” says Damian. “Perhaps that may ring a bell.”

Grayson coalesces; the only part of him that does not arrest its motion entirely is his eyes. They lay agape, gushing open. With the peculiar tilt of his head he keeps in the hope of minimizing his pain, he looks aptly ghoulish.

“You work for a _supervillain?”_ says Grayson. “You work for a supervillain. A supervillain wants to kill me.”

“As lacking a word as I find ‘supervillain,’ yes, I suppose I do—and yes, he does want to kill you. Actually,” Damian starts, mouth motoring ahead of his thought process. “The exact parameters of my mission were to ‘take care of the situation by any means necessary.’ Killing was simply the most expedient way to rid us of our _you_ issue.”

“You would think that Batman would have mentioned that part, when he came to visit me,” mulls Grayson, who begins to tap a beat out with his toes. The plastic bags that plaster his feet crinkle, an unappealing accompaniment to the rhythm. He wore no shoes at the detention center; they must be courtesy of Cassandra. 

It is Damian’s turn to play at parodying a statue.

“You… spoke to Batman,” he says.

“Mhm,” says Grayson, and then, he lours, deep and dark. “He’s a liar, though. He promised that he’d help me get revenge on the man who killed my parents, but that was two weeks ago, and I’ve heard zilch from him since. ‘Stop trying to run away from the detention center, Dick,’ ‘I promise you everything will be OK if you just wait, Dick,’ ‘We can bring that man to justice without killing him, Dick,’ he said.” Pausing to dig his heel into the ground with sanguinary intent, he spits at the ground. “Batman is a lying liar who lies. That’s why I need your help, Mr. Assassin. Because if nothing else… you’re—” he says a word Damian does not understand.

The draft, the wind, the air, it all rings in Damian’s ears, compacting his brain matter unto the ardent ache of his head.

“My name is Damian,” he corrects, faintly. “If I am going to help you, that is how you shall address me.”

Grayson cheers; it’s a hoarse, wretched thing, but a cheer nonetheless.

“Double D for the win!” he says.

Damian’s eyebrows go sky high.

“‘Double D?’”

“Yeah,” says Grayson, like it should be obvious. “Duh-ick. Duh-amian. Double D. You’re the big D, and I’m the little D.”

“Should you ever, _ever_ refer to me as ‘Big D’ again, I will be sure to slash your larynx when I go for your throat.”

Dick beams; it’s an awful thing, gleams like the sun is bouncing off of it without layers upon layers of atmosphere as a buffer.

“I shan’t entertain such immature inclinations a second longer,” says Damian. “I’m waking Cassandra. You two share a sense of humor; make it your duty to entertain each other while I get the bulk of the work done.”

Grayson breaths in, quick and sharp.

“Do we really have to? Wake her up, I mean,” he asks.

Narrowing his eyes, Damian rolls his weight to the balls of his feet and begins inching backward, toward Cassandra.

“And why wouldn’t we?” he asks.

Grayson curls in deeper on himself, and despite the wince it elicits, tucks himself into his stomach.

“I dunno,” he says. “I just… she’s _scary._ You didn’t see her in those woods.”

“Is this your idea of a joke?” Damian asks, full aware that Grayson is far too dewy and doe-eyed to tread upon this sort of kidding. He might laugh. He might.

“It’s not funny!” Grayson snaps. “I’m right!”

“Of course,” Damian says, obligingly, “As much as any fool ever was. I’m waking her. Now _sit still._ You are going to—” exacerbate, but he doesn’t know how to say that “—make your injuries worse.”

Huffing mulishly, Grayson scuttles backward, a little.. He winces, again, because he is a simpleminded nitwit. Damian creeps forward toward Cassandra, and stands right in her line of sight.

“Ubu,” he barks, “attention.”

Cassandra freeze-dries; she goes perilously still. Then, she shoots upward, two knives seemingly manifesting from thin air, but really finding their origins by her shin and behind her neck, respectively.

Ignoring the intake of breath audible from a few meters away, he stands tall, brandishing his own knife. Cassandra’s eyes lock on him; she drinks him in, looks despairingly desperate.

“Good morning, Cass,” Damian says. “I think we need to talk about following mission parameters. I distinctly recall telling you that you were only allowed to come on the condition that _you didn’t get in my way.”_

With an identical mulish huff to the one Grayson had let out but a minute ago, Cassandra thrusts out her right palm, and sticks up her middle finger.

 _Fuck you,_ he confirms to himself, despite the incontrovertible gesture leaving no necessity for it.

“Excuse me?” he says.

She folds onto her feet and glides toward him, comes to cup his chin with her non-dominant hand. When he lets her, she tilts it up, meets his eyes. Taking her dominant hand, palm-down, she bobs it in front of her as if she is patting someone on the head.

_Child._

She pokes out one of her index fingers and jabs it into her other palm.

_Murder—_

Then, she points at Damian.

_—er._

Damian chokes on an actual, audible scoff.

“You,” he points at Cassandra, and then turns around to jab his finger in Grayson’s direction. He blinks aggrievedly. “And you. The both of you!” Cassandra and Grayson exchange a glance; Grayson seems a willing participant in this exchange considering his earlier sentiments. “Have to realize something.”

His feet barely touch the ground, as he skims toward the fridge.

“And apparently you need a practical demonstration.”

Touching the fridge open and slipping his hand under the platter of strawberry flowers, he tugs it out, and sets it on the counter; stabs his knife next to the first. Damian picks the tallest and most lovely from the flowers, one that blooms from near the center.

“Imagine this is a child,” he says.

“Hey—” Grayson starts.

“Not you,” Damian snaps, honing his glare to a fine point under both this and the particular that Grayson had just spoken in French. “A child. Any child. Call him… Sanam.”

Cassandra wrings her hands out in front of her. They fizzle and sizzle. Grayson opens his mouth, and then closes it again.

“Sanam,” says Damian, “has a life. He goes to school, and has friends, and likes to take apart his mother's microwave and put it back together.”

Turning around, he snaps in Grayson’s direction, curtly and ungraciously.

“Grayson,” he says, “give me another thing.”

Grayson uncurls, a bit, starting at Damian inquisitively.

“Huh?”

“You heard me,” Damian informs him. “Tell me something about this boy. His favorite color. What he likes to eat. How his relationship with his mother is. I don’t care.”

“OK…” says Grayson, squinting his eyes. He still speaks in French. His hands creep toward his neck, and then scuttle back downward. “Sanam.. likes dogs? Yeah. He has a dog. Named Green?”

“He has a dog named Green,” says Damian, for Cassandra’s benefit, and then turns to her. “Your turn.”

She nods with solemn intent. Then, she places her palms on top of one another, and moves the flat of her dominant one over her non-dominant one.

_Nice._

She draws a crescent up her mouth with her index fingers.

_Smile._

“He has a nice smile,” Damian says, for Grayson’s benefit. “OK. That will get him far.”

Damian cups Sanam the strawberry in his hands, tossing him from one, to the other, to the other. Then, he stops. Rolling it between his fingers, he allows it to fall into the divot between his thumb and index finger. He proceeds to crush it. Its juices splatter across the countertop; they stain Damian’s hands.

Grayson gapes, a careworn thing. Still, it is an ostentatious counterpart to Cassandra’s holy ground-silent intake of breath.

“What was that for?” Grayson demands. “Why would you name him and come up with stuff about him if you were going to kill him?”

“Because I’m a murderer,” Damian says, “and I murder indiscriminately. Pushing your ethics onto me to make yourself feel better about staying with me is craven, you lily-livers. I may be older than you both, but I am not your guardian, nor am I your moral compass.”

Neither Cassandra nor Grayson speak. The air does not either, for that matter. There is only the chitter of their neighboring hotel rooms to keep them company.

“Clearly, our being together isn’t an ideal situation. I shan’t stand for it any longer,” Damian says. He nabs a napkin from the countertop, and begins rubbing strawberry carcass from his hands. “This doesn’t mean I intend to leave you to the wolves.” He walks to the sink, pumps soap over his palms, and begins scrubbing. “Grayson, clearly you are murder-proof. Cass, your resilience, if nothing else, has proven astounding. I am friends with a couple. They have no children of their own, but they are foster parents. They live in Switzerland. I should... be inclined to send the both of you off to them. It would not be so hard to create fake identities, for you.”

Damian waits. Then, he waits. Then, he waits. Grayson says not a word. Cassandra makes not a peep. His only solace is to find poetry in the whirring of the air conditioner.

“But you’re going to help me get the guy who killed my parents, right?” Grayson asks.

Holding up the index finger of one hand, Cassandra aims the index finger of her other hand toward it. She stops just before she makes contact.

_Goal._

Goal, she had said the other day. Goal, she had chosen, over leaving the League.

“Perhaps Talia was onto something when she alluded to my eternal damnation,” Damian says. “Fine. You wish to stay with me to further your own ends. Fine. But we’re going to do it my way.”

Grayson raises a hand and from where he is still curled on the ground. He is panting, and his other hand ghosts his neck. 

“Aye, aye, Captain,” he says, a little more hoarse than he had before.

With tenacity unprecedented, despite having comprehended not a word Grayson has spoken the entire duration of their conversation, Cassandra creeps toward him, after flashing Damian a thumbs-up. She offers him an arm, sidles along his side in the most open sort of hug there is.

Grayson’s breath quickens, and he goes stiff. His eyes flicker up and down, almost seizing, along the breadth of Cassandra’s body. Eventually, however, he acquiesces, sinking into her grip.

Cassandra makes a soft murmur. It’s the first sound that Damian may have ever heard from her. Grayson gasps: in, out, in, and she shushes him.

Resolutely, Damian turns away.

“We’ve already established a motive for both Cassandra and me being in the country,” he says, “in our business lives. My grandfather has provided us one of his corporations to use as a front. It’s pivotal in us covering our tracks in what we have accomplished over the last week.”

Making a curious humming noise, Grayson peers up at him from where he is nestled in Cassandra’s arms. She allows her gaze to rove over him in similar expression.

“I’ve contacted many corporations, to make it looks as if we’re testing the waters of our holdings. I’ve scheduled two meetings so far, and hope to round it out with at least one more. We get that over with, then we can find a trail for the man who killed your parents, and perhaps, if Cassandra finds herself inclined to _share,”_ he jibes, “we can set forth to achieve her goal, as well.”

“That sounds boring,” says Grayson. He’s finally switched to English. His voice stands on newborn doe legs.

“That,” says Damian, “is what is going to allow us to avenge the deaths of your parents without it being traced back to us.”

Huffing, Grayson gives him a thumbs down. Cassandra’s lips twitch upward in what might be a smile, might purview in some distant universe, and she drags him closer.

“ _Bo-_ ring,” he repeats, with more jeuge, this time.

Cassandra puts her free hand to her heart, and nods.

“If you say so,” says Damian, ignoring the both of them in favor of sweeping toward his laptop. He opens it, types all thirty-one digits of his passcode, and resolves to check his email. He has five new messages.

> ainsleystevens@annesmith.co — You contacted me yesterday evening, Mr. al Malak. In order to proceed...
> 
> e_hampton@jenningscorp.com — Hello, Mr. al Malak. It was a pleasure to receive your email...
> 
> ken@ishida.net — Mr. al Malak, it’s so great to hear from you, again! I’d love to...

With two deft clicks of his finger, Damian moves these three to his “rejected” folder, to be turned down at a later hour. 

> richardsloan@demeterllc.com.— Mr. Malak, I appreciate you reaching out to me. I’ve reviewed our...

Damian command-clicks and opens that one in a new tab.

The last email, he clicks on to read in its entirety from the beginning.

> Hello Mr. al Malak,
> 
> I’m reaching out to you in hopes that we can schedule a meeting. Wayne Enterprises has long acknowledged Bilut as a force to be reckoned with, and upon learning that you’re doing business in Gotham City, thought this might be a good time to contact you. Please let me know at your earliest convenience whether or not this sounds like something you might be interested in.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Tim Drake, EA  
> Wayne Enterprises, Inc.  
> timothydrake@wei.com  
> +1 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

In essence: We need to talk. We know that the League is in Gotham City, and while you’ve pulled off some pretty impressive things in the past, we’re not letting you get away with anything this time. You can come to us, or we can find you. Either way, it won’t end well.

Damian puts his fingers to his temples, and then steeples them under his chin. After some contemplation, he begins to surface research. He learns that Tim Drake is a real person. Given the nature of the email, it’s plausible that either he had been given a template and ordered to send it as-is, or he is aware of the fact that Wayne moonlights in bat-themed armor.

He can test that, he realizes.

> Hello Mr. Drake,
> 
> I have talked to my company’s board, and they believe that Wayne Enterprises and Bilut conducting business together is a discerning idea. I am in Gotham City until the 26th, and may be able to find time in my schedule for us to convene. If you could suggest a date, I believe we should be able to plan from there.
> 
> Damian al Malak, CFO  
> Bilut, Ltd.  
> dam@bilut.co  
> +92 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

Re: you are a peon to the League and we are merely entertaining you.

Damian pushes back in the chair he is sitting in, and peers behind him. Cassandra and Grayson have transferred to the couch—Grayson is curled on the very opposite end of it from her, and intermittently shoots her looks. She sneaks in her own share of clandestine glances; her hand hovers by her side; every time it creeps toward Grayson she jerks it backward.

The television is on, wherein a middle-aged, bald male actor, updressed and cladding glasses, throws a large potted plant at an office window. The camera pans to an equally middle-aged and well-dressed blonde woman’s fazed visage.

Grayson notes he has turned away from his task. He looks a little more heartened than he had a few minutes ago.

“Come watch!” he says, so eager that his misplaces the English cue, once again. “This guy just found out his wife is having an affair, and now he’s going absolutely—” He chirps a word that Damian doesn’t know. Whatever it insinuates, he looks delighted.

“That’s quite the reaction,” Damian comments.

“Right?” says Grayson. He pats the seat between Cassandra and him. “Come.”

“I’ll pass,” says Damian, turning back toward his computer. He does not take the time to examine Grayson’s face. He ensures conscientiously that he doesn’t get even a glance of it. He refreshes his email. There is no change. After formulating two of the let-you-down-easy emails, he does so again. No dice.

One-point-eight-seven hours is the median amount of time it takes for someone to respond to a business email. It has been eleven minutes.

He composes his third email to a corporation that he has no intention of following up with, and then responds to Sloan, arranging a meeting for the next day.

He refreshes. He refreshes. He refreshes.

And then he hits a B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o:

> Mr. al Malak,
> 
> I’m glad to hear it. This may be a little forward, but how does later today sound? My company feels it is prudent to begin our dealings as soon as possible, considering the looming date of your departure.
> 
> Thanks so much,
> 
> Tim Drake, EA  
> Wayne Enterprises, Inc.  
> timothydrake@wei.com  
> +1 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

Damian scoffs, because that might be the most logorrheic way anyone has ever said “bullshit” to him, before. Drake knows beyond any and all reasonable doubt of Wayne’s vigilante inclinations. 

Taking pleasure in stalling his reply, Damian proceeds to spend two-and-a-half hours doing research into Wayne Enterprises’ domestic and international dealings over the last five years. They’re enough of a corporate giant that Damian already has an up-to-snuff conspectus on their exploits, but most of his ventures thus far into fronting for Ra’s companies lie in the East. 

WE’s spirited, goody two-shoes handprints splatter nearly half the Earth. They are environmentally conscientious and scrupulous—Damian can unravel kilometers of Grandfather’s fascination with Wayne on this alone.

> Dear Mr. Drake,
> 
> You are not out of bounds. In fact, I can meet today. If it suits your needs, I can speak with one of your people over lunch. Champs-Élysées d’Amérique is in a convenient vicinity, and has private rooms. I’m free any time from now to 14:30.
> 
> Damian al Malak, CFO  
> Bilut, Ltd.  
> dam@bilut.co  
> +92 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

It takes nigh on five minutes for Drake to requite.

> Hello Mr. al Malak,
> 
> How does 11:00 sound? I know it’s a bit early for lunch, but I think in this case it’s best to start running before the canon goes off.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Tim Drake, EA  
> Wayne Enterprises, Inc.  
> timothydrake@wei.com  
> +1 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

Damian’s fingers sing over the keys; each word is hit with the full force of gravity. The verisimilitude lies in the melodrama.

> Mr. Drake,
> 
> 11:00 is more than acceptable.
> 
> Damian al Malak, CFO  
> Bilut, Ltd.  
> dam@bilut.co  
> +92 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

The verisimilitude lies in the melodrama.

> Hello Mr. al Malak,
> 
> Great! I’ll let Mr. Wayne know; he’ll be there! You’ve been very flexible, and on behalf of all of WE, I’d like to thank you for that.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Tim Drake, EA  
> Wayne Enterprises, Inc.  
> timothydrake@wei.com  
> +1 (xxx) xxx-xxxx

I’ll let Mr. Wayne know, he says. Damian is not to meet with some nugatory nitwit. He is to lay his eyes upon his father, a man of much stalwart morality, a man whom Damian has been informed by Grandfather that his worth does not merit meeting. By the transitive property, then, Grandfather values this man more than not just him, but his mother as well.

Something touches his shoulder; Damian goes stiff, throws his weight backward into a spin, and formulates a reeling kick toward the threat. His foot is grabbed, and twisted; he is slammed onto the desk.

He blinks up at Cassandra, who does not pant. Hovering above him with two raised eyebrows, she holds her hands up in the universal gesture of de-escalation. Then, she moves one of her hands to point at him, and proceeds to rock it while it’s curled into a fist, her thumb sticking up.

_Are you OK?_

Coming to his bearings beneath her, he puts his hands on her shoulders and gently moves her backward, a few steps. Then, he sits up, and presses his hands to the floor beside him.

“Tt. Why do you ask?” he says, tracing a tear in one of the tiles.

She touches the four fingers of both her hands to the edges of her palms. One faces outward, the other inward. She brings the thumbs to each other, and then pulls the hand facing outward toward Damian.

_Far away._

“I was thinking,” he says. “And _you_ are overthinking. I banish you to your show. Go forth and watch the man scorned commiserate over his lost love.”

He turns away from her, but she places a hand on his shoulder, her benign fingers beckon him back. She darts her hand to her left under her chin, and then brings both of them down like she is putting a box to a table.

_Liar._

Damian looks at her incredulously, but makes his retort expeditiously. He takes his right hand and lays it horizontally in front of his body; takes his left and waves it horizontally, palm facing forward. The plight of every crossing guard.

_Busybody._

To the slow tug of gravity to her jaw, Damian says, “Has anyone ever told you that your people skills are incredibly invasive.”

Cassandra’s contriteness comes with such immediacy that Damian dubs it “inordinately and ardently disturbing.” She makes the same sign she uses for the letter “a” in “Cass,” and rotates it a few times across her chest in the same direction as a clock’s hands.

_Sorry._

When she reaches over to press her hand to Damian’s heart, he lets her. He presses his own over it. Though he can’t feel his heartbeat through her hand, he senses its regularity.

“It was a joke, Cass,” he says. “Your abilities... they are impressive.”

Her next sign is rapid and vociferous. She puts the fingers of her right hand to her lips, then shoves them down and away. 

_Bad._

Then, she finger-spells. Damian doesn’t quite catch the letters, with their incredible speeds of light, but if he was anyone else, might smile, now. Her intention is clear. But Damian is Damian, and Damian doesn't smile, so he lifts Cassandra’s hand from his heart and places it onto hers.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My jokes, as everything else I do, are skillful and well-executed.”

He turns his nose up at her and shoos her away with the flat of his palm. That smile she gave Grayson, earlier, she gives it to him, now, and Damian can’t look at it without feeling as though his eyes are being peeled raw, or seared through by laser in-situ keratomileusis.

“I’m leaving,” Damian announces, rather than parsing through the feeling.

“That means you have to get ice cream, when you come back,” Grayson tells him. “People who are mean to their leeches have to buy them ice cream.”

“You’re… insulting yourself?” Damian asks, gaze askance.

Vibrating like a drum hard-pounded, Grayson beams up at him.

“I like—” He seems to be in the habit of picking pivotal times to insert words Damian does not know into conversation. “But they don’t usually have it, so. you don’t have to worry about that. I also like—” He does it again. Encore, encore. A star is born, take a bow.

“Tt. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Damian lies. He looks from Cassandra to Grayson; sees the looseness in the lean wire of their bodies.

“I shan’t be gone too long. I’m aware you don’t know ASL, Grayson, but Cassandra is an excellent communicator. I’m sure you’ll figure out a common ground, given time.”

In all likelihood, they probably wouldn't. That was going to be a problem.

Grayson’s breath quickens; not by a lot, but it quickens. He does an admirable job at trying to hide it. Damian almost feels sorry, at his unawares of the sheer adroitness with which Cassandra will be able to read the intentions of his body.

“Can’t I come with you?” he asks.

“Would you like to meet Bryce Rain?” Damian asks.

Deflating, Grayson brings both of his hands to his neck, again. “No,” he admits.

Damian wouldn’t like to meet Bryce Rain, either, but Damian hasn’t much choice. He robotically pats Grayson on the head; it’s a consoling thing he has often seen adult figures do for the children in their lives. Leaning into the touch just enough so that Damian’s nails catch in his hair, Grayson gives him a short nudge.

“Good luck,” he says, like he knows, with those eyes that know.

And then Cassandra is there, and she is putting her hand to her chin, and bringing it out, and then puts her three outermost fingers down, and then lets one rise as her thumb falls. She convolutes her hand, before bringing her thumb back to these first two fingers

_Good luck._

Damian wonders if Bruce Wayne is the sort of person who believes in luck. He doubts it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't take advice on how to interact with your younger peers from damian. (he's getting better. he is.)


	4. Luke, I am Your Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There is no audio monitoring in this room,” Wayne informs him, with blithe ignorance of his new injury, “so I believe it would be prudent to get, as they say, right down to business.”
> 
> Damian raises an eyebrow. “Really?” he says. “I thought we would at least order, first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meeting your twenty-one-year-old son for the first time isn't so fun when you're not on a sitcom or a dramedy. don't forget the first rule of fight club. don't forget the second rule of fight club. and definitely, definitely, don't forget the third rule of fight club.
> 
> psst: in addition to giving this baby a tag and summary makeover, i upped the rating from "canon-typical violence" to "graphic depictions of violence." we've been popping stitches, dislocating fingers, and slashing carotid arteries under the wrong rating. please keep an eye on the warnings in the additional tags as you read through, as well.

Karmic justice rains upon him, literally: the weather is inclement. He traipses the streets and huddles amongst the others on the bus in soaked clothes. If one wasn’t aware of the situation, they’d likely assume Damian had been pitched into a bathtub. His sweater and pants are soaked.

They pass Wayne Enterprises, on their way to the part of town with the restaurant Damian is to meet the man of the hour at. Its headquarters balances ritziness and self-effacement poorly, all things considered. It seems like it doesn’t belong within itself, almost: modernism and Victorian era flair and those awful windows from god-knows-when.

Somehow, though, it works. The cohesion is undeniable, perhaps helped by the swathes of silhouettes visible through over fifty stories of windows. Cubicles and offices and desks, oh my. Bustlers and hustlers and all the et ceteras.

Damian has to blink several times, to accustom his eyes to the sight, and by the time he thinks he might have they have blown past it. The bus is abject in its unforgivingness, as all streamlined creatures are.

With the bus stop in the best proximity three blocks away from Champs-Élysées d’Amérique, Damian, it seems, is doomed to another soaking.

The notion that rain washes all sins away is a lie, Grandfather had said, once. It is yet another one of the Earth’s mercies, to make humans think their misdeeds can be washed away by its waters. In truth all it does is poison them. Earth suffers, for human sin, and as humans and the Earth are inextricably connected, they poison us all.

Grandfather’s words meet the discord of an umbrella salesman’s vociferous pleas to the masses. Briskening his pace, Damian does his best to become one with the rain. He had previously deemed it prudent not to stand too straight—it seemed a human tradition that the confident were a beacon to trouble and the troubled—but now he arches his back and rolls into a veritable march.

If you try to sell me an umbrella, I will strew your guts across W Main Street. Do not test me; I have a knife. I have several knives. I have used these knives in ways that hearing about would make you so sick that you would agree to fast for the rest of your short, miserable life just to never have to see food again.

No one tries to sell him an umbrella.

Damian has been to both France and Champs-Élysées d’Amérique exactly once, but can still reasonably discern that the latter is pretty heavy on the “d'Amérique.”

When they had gone here, Cassandra had refused his suggestions of duck confit or tartiflette in favor of ordering a hamburger and french fries. As she had drawn a smiley face on the burger with ketchup, she had flashed Damian the slyest scorn of look he thinks he has ever or may ever see from her.

They stuck to fast food joints, after that.

Damian enters the restaurant, and approaches the receptionist’s desk.

“Excuse me,” he says, “I have a reservation for a private room, for a party of two.”

The waitress looks up at him, squints, and then blinks several times.

“Reservations for a private room,” she repeats, enunciating each word with the sort of cloying slowness that might induce vomit.

“Yes,” Damian confirms, and because he is feeling in a particular way, he repeats, “reservations for a private room.”

“OK,” says the waitress. Her name tag says Paige. “Under what name?”

Damian studies the grain of wood that jigsaws across the floor. There are approximately seven interlocking pieces, per row, on the raised piece of floor that they stand on. Bracing his shoulders, he makes sure his next words do not come out as quiet as he wants them to.

“Al Malak,” he says.

“Huh?” Paige asks.

“Al Malak,” Damian intones, slicing each slate of wood into quarters with his eyes, and, columning them deftly. “It’s my last name.”

He arranges his face as pleasantly as he can manage, without trying to force a smile that would just make him look ill.

“‘A-L,’ and then ‘M-A-L-A-K?’” asks Paige.

“Yes,” Damian confirms.

“OK!" she says. "Please follow me.” She nabs two menus from a neat stack at the corner of her table, with the kind of farcical cheer usually reserved for voice actors on children’s cartoons. “Your friend is already here, so let’s get you settled.”

Before he collects himself, Damian bites down on his lip with his teeth, hard. Wincing is a biological reaction he was trained out of in his youth, but it still comes to call, and he has to stifle one.

“My friend is here,” Damian echoes, and he looks up, because they’ve reached a door; Paige opens the door, and sure enough, there is a man seated at a table far too large for just their two persons.

The first thing Damian notes is that Wayne’s back is to a window. The second thing Damian notes is that he intermittently and surreptitiously readjusts himself in such a way that his peripheral vision is able to catch the edges of said window. Wayne does not sweat; he does not fidget; his muscles are not tense.

Flashing Paige a smile, all teeth, and then flashing Damian a smile, _all teeth,_ he stands up, and pushes out the chair, not directly across from him, but to his side.

That chair has its back to the door. Paige returns his smile. Damian does not.

“Hello, Mr. al Malak. It’s so nice to meet you.” Wayne eyes the puddle gaining ground around Damian’s loafers; the water gleams with malicious intent. “You look like you’ve had a rough journey. Please, have a seat.”

Damian does not “have a seat.” Damian stands there, and stares at Wayne, and dissects his facial features, scalpels along the lines of his bones centimeter by centimeter.. He’s seen a picture or two, before; always in his grandfather’s presence, where he didn’t dare let his eyes linger. Independent research was something he was always of the ability but never of the actioneering to do.

Some notes:

  * Wayne has a five o’clock shadow.
  * Wayne has liquid foundation, delicately touched, applied under his eyes. It’s visible only under certain instances of condition of light.
  * Wayne looks a few shades lighter than it should be, and while his natural skin tone must be dark enough that this does not catch any attention, looks to be that way out of a pale, sickly sort of explanation rather than genuinely.
  * Wayne holds his ribs delicately; his posture is deliberate; each blink he takes is a few seconds too long.



This is the man whom his grandfather extols the virtues of to the detriment of his own flesh and blood. This pathetic _slip_ of a thing, this _petticoat,_ is the man who sired Damian, and the man who was supposed to be of superior—everything.

_You are a failed experiment, Damian, and if it were not for my magnanimity I should think to toss you over a cliff like the Spartans did to their defective babes._

_Why can’t you be more like your father? One would think that a man of his prestige would produce a surpassing ilk of offspring, but look at you. I blame the test tube._

Et cetera, et cetera. This is that man? _This?_

“The pleasure is all mine,” says Damian. He walks past Paige, affording her a nod, and sits directly across from Wayne, ignoring the seat he pulled out for him. Then, he sticks out his hand to shake.

Wayne does not take his hand right away. No, he looks up, and smiles again. “Thank you so much, Paige,” he says. “My associate and I will take it from here.”

Paige goes all radish-red, blushing all the way from her roots. “It's no problem, Mr. Wayne,” she squeaks. “No problem at all. I’ll give you your menus, and leave you to it.”

“That would be great,” says Wayne. Finally, he meets Damian’s hand, and shakes it, abandoning the chair he had been grasping.

His grip is clinched, and painful. Damian grits his teeth, and squeezes until he feels a bone shift, and then snap. Wayne does not reciprocate this gesture. Instead, they stay, locked in this grip, until blustering, out-of-her-element, oblivious Paige leaves.

“There is no audio monitoring in this room,” Wayne informs him, with blithe ignorance of his new injury, “so I believe it would be prudent to get, as they say, right down to business.”

Damian raises an eyebrow. “Really?” he says. “I thought we would at least order, first.”

“I like to save good food for good company, Mr. al Malak,” says Wayne. “And anyone close enough to Ra’s al Ghul for him to permit them to make a joke of his title is not someone I’d call ‘good company.’”

“You’d truly deny the star-eyed Miss Paige the privilege of serving you?” Damian asks, clasping his hands over the table. “Clearly, you are not the man I thought you were.”

Raising his own eyebrow, Wayne leans back in his chair, slightly, and meets Damian’s eyes for the first time. Their redolence to lightning bugs is astounding, truly.

“Paige,” Wayne informs him, “will be tipped handsomely. She need not worry about either of us.”

“Well, there goes my plan of poisoning your food to rid the world of your detestable presence,” says Damian.

Wayne crosses his legs at the ankle, something Damian is able to note only by the slight noise of a shift which makes itself known from underneath the table. With his palms flat on the table, curled over the sides, he looks positively regal.

“Has Ra’s’ opinion of me truly deteriorated so much over the years?” he asks.

Damian does his best to repress a snort, and it is not just at Wayne’s pronunciation of his grandfather’s name. He does. It is a valiant effort, one that will go down in the ages. _Why can’t you be more like your father? One would think that a man of his prestige would produce a surpassing ilk of offspring, but look at you. I blame the test tube._

“The test tube” was spearheaded and superintended by _you,_ Ra’s al Ghul.

“You have nothing to worry about, in that area,” he reassures. “‘Reish’s’ opinion of you blew through the stratosphere years ago, and shows no signs of coming down any time soon.” 

Leaning forward, Wayne takes his hands from the table and steeples them under his chin. It should do well to be painful, with one of his metacarpals out of commission, but his expression does not shift in the slightest. With a mild smile, he is picturesque celebrity magazine cover material. Damian does not move closer in riposte, but he also does not move back. Pyrrhic victories are for the foolhardy.

“Really?” Wayne asks. “Because usually, when he’s in my city, he has the courtesy to let me know.” Pausing, he takes a sweeping glance down at the menu. “But I digress—you may yet be right about ordering food here, if only to keep up appearances. Personally, I’m partial to ratatouille, but as you suggested this restaurant, you must be more familiar with it than I. Is that something you would recommend?”

“Perhaps,” Damian lies, flat out, ”he found it prudent not to inform you of his business, considering, as usual, that it has nothing to do with you up until the point where you choose to meddle.” He begins to unravel the napkin laid diagonally across the small plate, in front of him. Making a point of keeping the fork and knife out of Wayne’s reach, and on second thought providing sanctuary for the spoon as well, Damian lays the napkin upon his lap. “And I wouldn’t know—about the ratatouille. However, may I suggest you choose something with a little more protein. You look halfway on your way to passing out.”

Wayne—smiles. It’s rare that Damian has seen something so utterly charlatan in his life. Allowing his hand to slip over to grip one of the utensils, Damian gives it a short squeeze. The cold of the metal seeps into his hand; it washes through his veins.

“Did you know,” he comments, “that Ra’s’ henchmen are rarely so chatty. Were it not Tim who reached out to you, I would believe that you were stalling me here to enact some sort of agenda. You’ve not entirely convinced me otherwise, still.”

Who is “Tim” to you, Damian wants to ask; he does not ask. Instead, he says, “Excellent deduction, Detective.”

Wayne brings his hands back down, lowers them to his knees. Leaning in closer still, he narrows his eyes just so, so that there is a slight shadow hooding them, with the help of his hair

“I know that you had something to do with Dick Grayson’s death,” he says. The fabric around his knees crunches, and Damian can imagine the crescent moons he must be digging into the flesh of his knees with his fingernails. With the shadows around his eyes comes “And I further realize that the only reason that Ra’s might ever do such a thing was if he was trying to get me off my balance. So I will ask you again, a lot less nicely: _what is he planning?”_

Grayson. Grayson, _Grayson._ Wayne has a son he is not in want of, and he wants a son he is not in have of. It is Damian’s turn to smile, ersatz it may be. Damian has so many questions to ask this man, beginning and ending in sloped staccato notes; the notes say, "Why do you love him so?” “I’m just a lowly henchman. Don’t ask me.”

A fabrication this is not, actually. His grandfather had not deigned to share what he schemed to do with the freedom Batman’s tracking down of the culprit of they who got rid of Dick Grayson “by any means necessary.”

The Detective, of course, was not supposed to figure out the part where the League was involved. But that merely grazed the tip of the iceberg, for Ra’s al Ghul most certainly thought highly enough of the Batman to realize that he would, had even taunted him by putting measures into place to make certain he would. Calling Damian “al Malak,” having him reach out to other companies in the business world when, despite all the measures in place to make certain otherwise, Wayne would be able to trace funding for Bilut back to the League. The more self-evident certitude, too: there would be suspicion surrounding the fact that Grayson had died in the first place.

Damian almost coveted the hypothetical of taking the pains to fashion a “demise” for Grayson that appeared fortuitous, if only for the insult Wayne would feel at the adroitness and speed at which he was able to deduce that the death was, in fact, purposeful.

The lour on Wayne’s face says, “Lowly henchman, my ass,” or perhaps, “Bull _shit,”_ but what he actually says is, “I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

Pushing his plate to the side, he uses the table to leverage himself up, still heedful in the holding of his body. He steps deftly out from under it, and takes several steps toward Damian.

_Why can’t you be more like your father? One would think that a man of his prestige would produce a surpassing ilk of offspring, but look at you. I blame the test tube._

Damian finds himself pressed against the wall, constricted of breath, beyond constricted of breath: he can’t breath at all. Wayne’s hand grips his neck; Damian’s feet hover above the floor like tentative mosquitoes.

“It was my mistake, to believe that Ra’s wouldn’t stoop so low as to do something like this,” he says. “I have grown… lenient, with him over the years, if only because his unyielding principles are almost admirable.”

The grinding of Wayne’s teeth, his heaviness of breath—it is all audible. Damian can’t breathe.

_Why can’t you be more like your father?_

“It was my mistake,” he repeats, and if Damian is not wrong, there is a glisten to his eyes. It could easily be a mistake: he blinks and then it is gone. Damian does not make _mistakes._ Damian can’t breathe. _“So tell me why you did it.”_

There can be no roaring, not in a forum like this, but he has no doubt that were they truly alone, his voice would be able to level mountains.

_I blame the test tube._

Wayne’s abdominal muscles will be tightly clenched; no soft parts to kick, and arrest him of breath. Damian has been deprived of air too long for him to be able to make a pass of sheer strength, so he does what he knows will work next best: makes a claw for his eyes.

Reeling backward, Wayne misses Damian’s fingernails by fractions of a centimeter. He doesn’t let go of Damian’s neck, but he loosens his grip enough that Damian is able to buck him off; fall back to catch his breath.

“I am not a man of my own principles, Bruce Wayne,” says Damian. “Perhaps that is hard for you to relate to, but I do what I am told, when I am told, and I do not ask why.”

When Damian was seven years old, he knew a girl called Hafsa. When Damian was eleven, he knew one named Parisa. Twelve, a boy named Karim. Fourteen, Omar and Leila. His first friend was made at five; his name was Raza.

They were dissimilar people, all of them, sui generis. The only thing they had in common was Damian—to them, Hafid. The state of knowing Hafid; the state of having Hafid’s sword thrust through their chest.

“Hafid al Ghul.” 

“Grandson of the Demon.”

_Why can’t you be more like your father?_

“You already know this; you were waiting to goad me into a trap. I will confirm it for you. The boy isn’t dead. I will not tell you where he is, but he is not dead.”

Ra’s al Ghul named his second daughter Talia. It means “dew of heaven,” in Hebrew. “Nyssa” means “woman,” in Arabic, and in Greek it means “goal,” it means, “beginning.” Dusan, his hated son, his name is derived from the Slavic word for “soul.”

Damian’s original name was never a name at all. Damian, “to conquer, to tame; master, overcome,” that name was the creation of Ravi. He was Damian’s favored caretaker for a reason.

Ravi was one person Damian had not vivisected for himself. No, Grandfather had merely made him watch.

_I blame the test tube._

Darting back toward him, Wayne makes to slam him into the wall, again. Damian ducks, and allows his fist to ricochet toward his face. Wayne dodges neatly, but Damian shoves forward with all of his body weight; prepares to leap onto him and use his weight to force him to the ground. Despite having what has to be nine kilograms on Damian, Damian has at least point-zero-seven meters on _him,_ and uses them to his full advantage.

When he smashes into Wayne, it is like hitting a brick wall. It is, despite his best efforts, not enough to force him to supplicate on the ground, but it does catch him off balance. It allows Damian to dash his joints, and get in a good strike to both of his knees.

Wayne buckles inward, and grunts in one, big, gasping breath; it takes him a good long while to catch his balance. Immediately, though, he lunges forward with an uppercut aimed for Damian’s face. The shifting of the broken bone in his hand is audible.

_… your father?_

He hears the _crack!_ of both of his nasal bones splintering before he feels it. In a surging tide of rage—revenge of the Red Sea—blood slops out of his nose and begins to spigot outward, like a sprinkler watering grass.

“You,” Wayne says, as he drives Damian back against the wall, “are going to tell me what you did with him.” His pupils dilate, in the dim light of the corner he has cordoned them off in. “And you are going to do it now.”

“I bow to no man other than the Demon’s Head himself,” Damian gasps out. “Least of all _you.”_

Wayne responds by slugging Damian in the face.

“Your master is a reprehensible man,” he says. “Answering to him is akin to—”

“—answering to a demon?” Damian finishes, in raspy breaths. Wayne is not choking him, this time, has him by the collar instead, but the bruises around his neck _ache._ He would not be surprised if there was damage to his trachea. “His title is not for naught, you know. And you seem to be under,” he kicks his leg upward, and summarily knees Wayne in the groin, “a misapprehension.”

“Ra’s al Ghul,” he says, as Wayne lets out an involuntary coalescence of a whine and a wheeze; yet, his grasp on the collar of Damian’s shirt is fast, “is not my master. He is my grandfather.”

Loosening, that’s what Wayne’s grip does. His fingers, one by one, they jellify, become suppurating sponges that can grasp onto nothing. Damian, despite not being able to feel this, can sense it. Thus, he makes himself into deadweight, slides between his legs, and handstands over to land on Wayne’s back. With his legs he grips his neck, and with his hands he makes four quick jabs: two to the shoulder blades, and two to the elbow joints. The latter and former both go slack.

“Your… grandfather?” Wayne asks. His eyes are wide and window-esque, preaching to a church choir in spires of stained glass.

“He sired the woman who gave birth to me,” Damian confirms.

“Gave birth,” is used in the loosest sense, but Wayne doesn’t need to know that.

“Nyssa is infertile,” Wayne murmurs, almost to himself. He does not seem particularly concerned about the state of his arms. Damian's knees tighten their clutch on his neck. Still, he does nothing. “So that makes you…”

His breath, almost imperceptibly, quickens. Damian could finish for him, but he won’t.

“That makes you...” he repeats, leaning forward to rest his head against the wall. With limp arms hanging by his sides, he looks like a squid fit to be boiled. Damian’s weight slides forward, and he has to compensate by tilting himself away from the chipped, white paint.

“You’re Talia’s boy,” he breathes.

“Truly, you are the brainchild of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot,” says Damian. When he reels backward with Wayne’s head and slams it forward into the wall, Wayne lets him.

“Your… father,” he starts, after a moment; his breaths are careful and measured, but Damian knows from experience he must feel as if someone is taking a spile to his cranial area and tapping out the brain juice. “Talia… did she meet someone… or…?”

Damian tolerates his dancing around the subject. “‘Or,’” he confirms. “My mother is of a particular proclivity toward ignoring the concept of ‘consent,’ as you well know.”

With each hitch of his breath, Wayne sounds more a pathetic thing than the last. Eventually, he collapses to his knees; Damian goes tumbling to the ground with him, finding himself caught out of his element. They land in a heap; Damian is close enough to Wayne that his breath mists on the shell of his ear. He is muttering something, in hushed tones; it is audible, so Damian sharpens his ears to listen.

“Talia... what are you doing?”

It is Damian’s turn for his breath to hitch.

“Talia?” Bruce demands, but there is no bite to it. It sounds—lost. Hearing it makes Damian feel as if he’s back in the callous fringes of Fairy Meadows on a starless night, calling for a grandfather unmoved. The act of beseeching to be swept away.

Where are you?

Carefully extricating himself from the pile of limbs they have become, Damian backs away so that he is no longer touching Wayne. He looks into his eyes; he looks stoned sky high.

“I’m not Ta—” Damian starts, but belatedly realizes that saying her name might not be the best idea. “I’m Damian,” he says, and when Wayne’s eyes don’t even flicker, when he is of the utmost surety that these words will not penetrate him, he says, “I’m Ibn al Xu’ffasch.”

I’m the Son of the Bat. Your unwilling progeny.

“Stop,” Wayne commands. He blinks uselessly, all limp and strewn like a girl’s least favorite doll forgotten on the porch stoop.

Damian should leave. This is his chance to go; he should have never come in the first place. In this state, Wayne isn’t fit to tip a candlestick, let alone hustle from him the location of Grayson.

Instead, he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, because it is what Ravi, among other things, would murmur in his ear when he dressed his wounds, because his eyes sting and he can’t understand why; he doesn’t remember the sensation of his eyes stinging, ever, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—. That perches in the soul—. And sings the tune without words—. And never stops at all—.

“And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—. And sore must be the storm—. That could abash the little Bird. That kept so many warm—.

“I’ve heard it in the chillest land—. And on the strangest sea. Yet—never—in Extremity—. It asked a crumb of me—.”

Wayne is quiet. Damian is quiet. Damian recites the poem again. Then, “Because I could not stop for Death—,” He moves onto some of the work of Marina Tsvetaeva, then Pablo Neruda, then begins to recite “Inferno,” of Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”

Silence. For one minute, then two. Then five. Twenty. Paige should be back, by now. Damian had requested privacy, over the phone, but they inordinate amount of time it had been without them peering their heads out to request an order—she must be in the throes of a nervous fit.

He wonders how much longer it will take her to disregard their request, before she goes to check on them. It will certainly speak to the constitution of her character, either way.

“Emily Dickinson. ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—,” Wayne murmurs.

“Yes,” Damian says. “1861; published posthumously in 1891.”

Damian finds himself shoved to the floor, with Wayne breathing heavily atop him. His ribs creak; they are constricted beyond anything either helpful or healthful.

“You need to tell me where Dick is,” he says. “I’ll tell Ra’s… that the fault here lays with me, not you. I know him; he won’t punish you if he believes I outwitted you. All you have to do is tell me, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“It is a sick sentimentality you have, that you are coddling me because I am my mother’s child.”

Mic drop.

“You’ve misunderstood,” Wayne starts, “I’m not—” but he doesn’t get to finish, because at that very moment the intrepid Paige opens the door, is halted mid-hum.

It is an art, how gravity takes to her jaw, and each fine stroke of tooth and gum yields new beauty, as from her emits a scream of the most melodious sort.

“What are you _doing?”_ Paige demands. _“Oh my God, oh my God oh my God Godomigod—let go of him!”_

Despite Wayne being on top of Damian, it is clear who her shouted words are directed toward. She’s the next unlucky victim in a slasher film, and it’s oh so visible in her eyes.

Wayne’s grip loosens; Damian takes the opportunity to disentangle himself from his unyielding grasp. Shoving his hand into his pocket, and groping around for his wallet, he pulls out five twenties, and slaps them on the table.

“For your troubles, Miss Paige,” says Damian.

The manager has arrived; he is barking something in crisp tones, but Damian does not listen, has already begun to walk away. Brush past here, brush past there, brush past everywhere.

“Stop, right now, or I’ll call the cops!” is something Damian _does_ hear. But just because it goes in one ear, doesn’t mean it won’t come out the other. He does, though—comply, that is.

Wayne does not speak; he doesn’t have to. The leap lilies of his eyes say it all, they say, this isn’t over, so don’t you dare let go of that boy’s hand. He drifts to the tune of “absolutely inappropriate conduct"s and, "not welcome back here"s.

It takes them an hour and a souped-up check to convince the manager that everything is a-OK. Making sure never to leave the eyes of at least three bystanders at any given time, Damian makes his way from the restaurant, appetite unsated, and begins his journey toward a bus station in the opposite direction that he came. He has to zip up his jacket all the way to cover up the bruises that wrangle with his neck like weeds choking grapevines. He is still sopping wet.

“Wait,” calls Wayne from behind him.

Not waiting, that’s what Damian does.

“Please,” Wayne says, “answer me one thing.”

He still shan’t _really_ stay for this man, but he allows himself to hover in place, footsteps astrew so that Wayne can get close enough to speak freely. Still he looks ahead, not meeting his eyes.

“And what is that?” Damian asks.

“Is he OK?”

Damian thinks of Grayson’s throat, parted like a red sea in the hands of the above. He thinks of each lace-line of black thread stitching that sea together. And with this, he thinks of the infection, the way Grayson had buried his hands into his knees and trembled. Letting Cassandra hold him, despite the _tap-tap-tap_ of his bagged feet every time she came near.

There are other things, though, things that glisten when they are held up against the stars of old, trotting past alongside Ursa Major. Things that smile.

And in not letting himself think of those things, Damian does himself a favor.

“Why do you care so much?” Damian asks, instead of answering.

“Why do you care for my care?” counters Wayne, in a voice that is smooth, and quiet, and makes Damian’s newly incurred bruises smart all the more.

“He’s everything you want him to be,” Damian says, eventually, shortly, sharply, with the intention to Glasgow his smile. It comes out meeker than he intends; the realization of this truth makes something dark and twisty feather in the back of his throat. “You don’t need to worry about him.”

“I will find him,” Wayne calls, as Damian begins to walk away, again. “I’ll find him, and I’ll find you.”

“You might find him,” Damian agrees. In the periphery of his vision, he notes movement of Wayne’s face, but doesn’t turn around to see the exact ilk of it.

This time, Wayne lets him go.

In the spirit of circumspect, Damian takes a bus to Atlantic City, then rides the train to Blüdhaven, and then hails a cab to take him back to Gotham City. From there, he plans to take a series of buses, get off two stops an inconvenience, and walk the twenty or so blocks of painful necessity back to their hotel room. Prudence for the win. Still, Cassandra, Grayson, and he will have to leave immediately.

He is standing on the bus, one hand idly wrapped around a pole as he watches Gothamites dig their way through their little anthill in disgusted awe, when his phone buzzes. Damian's immediate thought is of Cassandra and Grayson, and that perhaps Cassandra had convinced Grayson to use the phone in some state of emergency. His rapid, ungraceful clambers toward entering his passcode are shameful.

What he gets instead is a message on WhatsApp. He had noted that it was downloaded to this phone when he had taken stock of the applications whoever had set it up had stocked it with, but hadn't realized an account had been set up.

< hi, damian

Damian has a list of exactly three people who would address him with the following specifications:

  1. blithely, but in all serenity.
  2. in lowercase letters.
  3. with the audacity to use a comma, but not a period.
  4. by not last name nor nickname, but full first name.



How did you get this number? >

< i didn’t expect to be met with this much hostility when i decided to get in contact with an old friend

Thus, he is able to chip one person off of the list. It takes him a while to plunk out all of the keys for his next response one-handed, but Damian manages.

I’ll stay my antagonism when you confirm your identity to me, and are able to offer a concrete explanation as to how you procured this number. >

< sure

< let me take a selfie

So it is—

< image15.jpg

Give the man a prize. Henceforth, he knows whom he addresses. 

< is this good enough for you?

You still have not endeavored to answer the second part of my request. >

< maybe i decided to track you down because i missed you

Damian lets go of the pole entirely, and wraps one of his legs around it for balance. He cups the phone between his two palms, and begins typing rapidfire. The bus rumbles, pitters up and over crags and rises in the pavement, but Damian pays them no mind, and in fact, is able to tune them out.

I did not think you took me for a fool, Maya Ducard. >

< i could never think lowly of you, damian al ghul

The conversation divots, from there, but this is Ducard, so he waits.

< ok, fine

< your grandfather called

Damian nearly chokes on his own spit; it drags its nails along his uvula and rips from him a cough of the most objectionable sort. He imagines Ra's al Ghul with a mobile phone held to his ear with all grace and no elbows or shoulders, spinning his words of flaxen thread to Ducard, and almost does so again. Grandfather and she have spoken exactly twice, both times with Damian as a middleman, to ensure the conversation was clipped, to business, and gave no leverage to the party most inclined to use it.

My grandfather called you? >

His grandfather called her.

< that’s what i said

_His grandfather called her._

And he gave you this number? >

Damian's grandfather called Maya Ducard.

< yes

You talked to my grandfather? >

< yes

You two spoke over the phone? >

"Hello, Miss Ducard, it's Ra's al Ghul, the six-hundred-year-old grandfather of your childhood acquaintance and enemy, Damian al Ghul. Would you like my grandson's phone number? He is currently single, and I believe the two of you would make an auspicious match. You are a lovely young lady of skill, intelligence, and class; he would be lucky to have you."

< we did

Damian wishes that the matter was one as easily resolvable as a promised marriage. However, had Grandfather wanted that, he would have simply dressed Damian in wedding clothes and sent him to the ceremony day-of, with no prior warning nor awareness.

What did he want? >

Oh noble band, play the Jeopardy music.

< this is why we get along so well

Oh, shut up. >

I suppose hearing from you again isn’t the worst thing in the world. >

Their last meeting was on a moonless night in Jaipur, over a year ago. With hours in their hands, crumbling down like dampened sands, they spewed words as one does sour butterflies. The stars sprinkled over their shoulders, and they felt all the part of gods.

< ♡

< i’m just being mean now. i won’t leave you hanging

< he wanted me to send you this

< **Gotham City’s Latest and Greatest — Bruce Wayne Attacked By Mysterious Man In Restaurant — by Mikey Antony:**[https://i2.wp.com/batman-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/image15.jpg?quality=80&strip=info](https://i2.wp.com/batman-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/image15.jpg?quality=80&strip=info)   
(Panel from _Robin: Son of Batman #3.)_

Grandfather, as ever, makes his intentions abundantly clear.

Damian allows himself a moment of inquiry into this line of thought: had it been Paige or the manager who had cracked, or perhaps neither, perhaps a blessèd passerby. With fairness to any of them, it was likely all of them who had taken a gossip rag artist by the hands and spilled. His second query is this: had it been Wayne or an interloper who had painted him as the aggressor?

He makes a stalwart effort at staunching the part of him which already is of the opinion that Wayne is a man of too much class to do such a thing. Grandfather's apotheosization of him has rubbed at him like a snowdrift on bare skin.

Ah. >

< yeah. he seemed pretty mad. apparently getting into a fight with one of the richest men in the world was not in his plans for whatever you were actually supposed to be doing

< the article is a wreck. they have a quote from wayne saying that the fight was two-sided and then they make you out to be the perpetrator. they remind everyone every other sentence that you’re arab...

< i’ve found some better ones if you want to see them

< thank your lucky stars that no one thought to take a picture. your face would be everywhere

Oh, I thank them every day, Latina. >

And thank you, but I think I get the picture from this one, as heavy-handed as it is. >

< you're so funny i forgot to laugh

< "heavy-handed" is one word for it

< what are you doing in the us anyway?

There is, hypothetically, nothing stopping Damian from informing Maya what he is doing. Yet, as his fingers hover over the keys, and the bus rocks to and fro, he finds himself hesitating. Richard, with eyes that harmonize with heart; Cassandra's bird-boned hands making diaphanous what people and their words, their malignant intents and subconscious defense mechanisms both, conceal. He does not have—

I’m here on personal business for my grandfather. >

< so secret mission you won’t tell me about. got it.

This is something that can only be spoken about in person, something that needed the jeuge of gesticulations and the breeds of facial expressions that assassins have beaten out of them in training; it needs words that flow like silk and have all the friction of tough-cut cloth. The dichotomies of salinity and sandpaper.

I'm glad we're on the same page. >

I appreciate your sending me this, Ducard. >

< don’t thank me, thank the demon’s head

< talk to you soon?

I will call you when I have time. >

< catch you later then

Slipping his phone back into his pocket, Damian peers through the people of the bus, in the throes of its thrumming, and watches the concrete jungle warp and twist from the windows. Sometimes, the sky is even visible in the clandestine gaps between buildings. There is not a cloud in sight; the sun only has smog as its partner. Still it only takes two to tango, and tango they do. As their yolks drip into each other, it appears almost as if they are two species of ice cream, mingling as they melt.

Damian pulls his phone back out.

Maya? >

< what’s up?

Do children generally get upset if you break promises to them? Small promises? >

< you’re asking the wrong person

< i think it’s like with most people though. it’s more of a trust thing than about the promise itself

< if someone tells something to you and believes with all of their heart that you’re going to do it, it hurts worse when you don't than it would otherwise

< you were a kid once. think about what it felt like for you

No one ever promised me such petty things as what I speak of to break in the first place. >

Oh. He actually just said that.

I apologize. I don’t mean to use you as an emotional lynchpin. >

< dude i do the same thing to you

The words taper off into another blank period. Once again, Damian waits.

< ok

< i’d say when in doubt, keep the promise. i don't think you'd be around the kind of kids who'd trust you with something lightly

Please kill the man who killed my parents, Mr. Assassin. Hey, while you're out, can you buy ice cream?

You lack of faith in my mental state is galling. >

I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you. >

< go off child assassin

< but seriously, no problem

You're Nobody to throw stones. >

< you never cease to amaze me. this time it's terrible puns. next time it will be killing my firstborn

While the bus hits no bump, nor anything of the like, Damian stumbles where he stands. The leg he has wrapped around the pole loosens, and then sinks, and he finds himself tripping over his own foot. Were it not for a particularly stalwart grip on his phone, it would have gone flying.

< don't even say anything. it was a joke. we've had too many Emotional Discussions about my father's death already

He waits, and waits, and waits. Ducard holds her silence. He types out a message, erases it. Tries again, with similar luck. All in all, he develops six drafts before hanging up his hat. It is only as he goes to place his phone back into his pocket that it buzzes, again.

< hey?

Four characters have never had such velocity.

Yes? >

< whatever kid you’re thinking of right now, they’re lucky. what you just asked me is a good thing

< wait your grandfather can’t see this conversation right?

He can’t. >

< thank god

< i was wondering why you seemed so emotionally available

Shut up. >

< never

< bye for real?

A toast to never speaking again. >

< the feeling is mutual you monster

Perhaps he can own up to the fact that he is the son of the world's greatest detective, if only long enough to figure out what Grayson's favorite flavor of ice cream is based on less than twenty-four hours of knowing each other, and vaguely recollected Spanish syllables. One more detour will only all the better throw Wayne and co. off his scent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #stanmayaducard, and conveniently forget about the part where i said i was mostly ignoring the nu52-rebirth continuity. does this mean you may see duke thomas in later chapters... [read this in a mumble] maybe.
> 
> unlike with talia, where i went and flat out picked one, i tried to balance all eighty-one years of batman comic canon to come to some "happy medium" characterization with bruce. i don't think that worked out too well, but you know what? you know what. not having children changed him, and that's final on the excuse i'm going with.
> 
> * * *
> 
> [as of 26 aug] i didn't think to add this until now, but: this very much glosses over the aftermath of a flashback. bruce was Not Having a Fun Time, but because this was from damian's perspective, someone too caught up in the moment to really... get that, it didn't come across as much as it should have. bruce spent a while before he spoke grounding himself as best he could, but he's still going to be feeling the aftereffects for a while.


End file.
